Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
SIndex

The learned index structures have reshaped our perspectives on the design of traditional data structures. With machine learning (ML) techniques, they can achieve better lookup performance than existing indexes. However, current learned indexes primarily focus on integer-key workloads and failed to efficiently index variable-length string keys. We introduce SIndex, a concurrent learned index specialized in variable-length string key workloads. To reduce the cost of model inference and data accesses, SIndex groups keys with shared prefixes and use each key's unique part for model training. We evaluate SIndex with both real-world and synthesized datasets. The result shows that SIndex can achieve up to 91% better performance compared with other state-of-the-art index structures. We have open-sourced our implementation1.
Segmentation of cellular patterns in confocal images of melanocytic lesions in vivo via a multiscale encoder-decoder network (MED-Net)

In-vivo optical microscopy is advancing into routine clinical practice for non-invasively guiding diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases, and thus beginning to reduce the need for traditional biopsy. However, reading and analysis of the optical microscopic images are generally still qualitative, relying mainly on visual examination. Here we present an automated semantic segmentation method called “Multiscale Encoder-Decoder Network (MED-Net)” that provides pixel-wise labeling into classes of patterns in a quantitative manner. The novelty in our approach is the modeling of textural patterns at multiple scales (magnifications, resolutions). This mimics the traditional procedure for examining pathology images, which routinely starts with low magnification (low resolution, large field of view) followed by closer inspection of suspicious areas with higher magnification (higher resolution, smaller fields of view). We trained and tested our model on non-overlapping partitions of 117 reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) mosaics of melanocytic lesions, an extensive dataset for this application, collected at four clinics in the US, and two in Italy. With patient-wise cross-validation, we achieved pixel-wise mean sensitivity and specificity of 74% and 92%, respectively, with 0.74 Dice coefficient over six classes. In the scenario, we partitioned the data clinic-wise and tested the generalizability of the model over multiple clinics. In this setting, we achieved pixel-wise mean sensitivity and specificity of 77% and 94%, respectively, with 0.77 Dice coefficient. We compared MED-Net against the state-of-the-art semantic segmentation models and achieved better quantitative segmentation performance. Our results also suggest that, due to its nested multiscale architecture, the MED-Net model annotated RCM mosaics more coherently, avoiding unrealistic-fragmented annotations.
De-identification of electronic health record using neural network

Abstract According to a recent study, around 99% of hospitals across the US now use electronic health record systems (EHRs). One of the most common types of EHR is the unstructured textual data, and unlocking hidden details from this data is critical for improving current medical practices and research endeavors. However, these textual data contain sensitive information, which could compromise our privacy. Therefore, medical textual data cannot be released publicly without undergoing any privacy-protective measures. De-identification is a process of detecting and removing all sensitive information present in EHRs, and it is a necessary step towards privacy-preserving EHR data sharing. Over the last decade, there have been several proposals to de-identify textual data using manual, rule-based, and machine learning methods. In this article, we propose new methods to de-identify textual data based on the self-attention mechanism and stacked Recurrent Neural Network. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to employ these techniques. Experimental results on three different datasets show that our model performs better than all state-of-the-art mechanism irrespective of the dataset. Additionally, our proposed method is significantly faster than the existing techniques. Finally, we introduced three utility metrics to judge the quality of the de-identified data.
Interventional few-shot learning

We uncover an ever-overlooked deficiency in the prevailing Few-Shot Learning (FSL) methods: the pre-trained knowledge is indeed a confounder that limits the performance. This finding is rooted from our causal assumption: a Structural Causal Model (SCM) for the causalities among the pre-trained knowledge, sample features, and labels. Thanks to it, we propose a novel FSL paradigm: Interventional Few-Shot Learning (IFSL). Specifically, we develop three effective IFSL algorithmic implementations based on the backdoor adjustment, which is essentially a causal intervention towards the SCM of many-shot learning: the upper-bound of FSL in a causal view. It is worth noting that the contribution of IFSL is orthogonal to existing fine-tuning and meta-learning based FSL methods, hence IFSL can improve all of them, achieving a new 1-/5-shot state-of-the-art on \textit{mini}ImageNet, \textit{tiered}ImageNet, and cross-domain CUB. Code is released at this https URL.
Response Selection for Multi-Party Conversations with Dynamic Topic Tracking

While participants in a multi-party multi-turn conversation simultaneously engage in multiple conversation topics, existing response selection methods are developed mainly focusing on a two-party single-conversation scenario.Hence, the prolongation and transition of conversation topics are ignored by current methods.In this work, we frame response selection as a dynamic topic tracking task to match the topic between the response and relevant conversation context.With this new formulation, we propose a novel multi-task learning framework that supports efficient encoding through large pretrained models with only two utterances at once to perform dynamic topic disentanglement and response selection.We also propose Topic-BERT an essential pretraining step to embed topic information into BERT with self-supervised learning.Experimental results on the DSTC-8 Ubuntu IRC dataset show state-of-the-art results in response selection and topic disentanglement tasks outperforming existing methods by a good margin. 1
Satellite-Based Photonic Quantum Networks Are Small-World

Recent milestone experiments establishing satellite-to-ground quantum communication are paving the way for the development of the quantum Internet, a network interconnected by quantum channels. Here, we employ network theory to study the properties of the photonic networks that can be generated by satellite-based quantum communication and compare them with those of their optical-fiber counterpart. We predict that satellites can generate small-world networks, implying that physically distant nodes are actually near from a network perspective. We also analyze the connectivity properties of the network and show, in particular, that they are robust against random failures. This positions satellite-based quantum communication as the most promising technology to distribute entanglement across large distances in quantum networks of growing size and complexity.1 MoreReceived 25 August 2020Accepted 15 December 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.2.010304Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasNetwork formation & growthNetwork structureQuantum entanglementQuantum networksQuantum repeatersNetworksQuantum Information
Feature Enhancement Based on CycleGAN for Nighttime Vehicle Detection

Existing night vehicle detection methods mainly detect vehicles by detecting headlights or taillights. However, these features are adversely affected by the complex road lighting environment. In this paper, a cascade detection network framework FteGanOd is proposed with a feature translate-enhancement (FTE) module and the object detection (OD) module. First, the FTE module is built based on CycleGAN and multi-scale feature fusion is proposed to enhance the detection of vehicle features at night. The features of night and day are combined by fusing different convolutional layers to produce enhanced feature (EF) maps. Second, the OD module, based on the existing object detection network, is improved by cascading with the FTE module to detect vehicles on the EF maps. The proposed FteGanOd method recognizes vehicles at night with greater accuracy by improving the contrast between vehicles and the background and by suppressing interference from ambient light. The proposed FteGanOd is validated on the Berkeley Deep Drive (BDD) dataset and our private dataset. The experimental results show that our proposed method can effectively enhance vehicle features and improve the accuracy of vehicle detection at night.
Machine learning-based offline signature verification systems: A systematic review

The offline signatures are the most widely adopted biometric authentication techniques in banking systems, administrative and financial applications due to its simplicity and uniqueness. Several automated techniques have been developed to anticipate the genuineness of the offline signature. However, the recapitulate of the existing literature on machine learning-based offline signature verification (OfSV) systems are available in a few review studies only. The objective of this systematic review is to present the state-of-the-art machine learning-based models for OfSV systems using five aspects like datasets, preprocessing techniques, feature extraction methods, machine learning-based verification models and performance evaluation metrics. Thus, five research questions were identified and analysed in this context. This review covers the articles published between January 2014 and October 2019. A systematic approach has been adopted to select the 56 articles. This systematic review revealed that recently, the deep learning-based neural network attained the most promising results for the OfSV systems on public datasets. This review consolidates the state-of-the-art OfSV systems performances in selected studies on five public datasets (CEDAR, GPDS, MCYT-75, UTSig and BHSig260). Finally, fifteen open research issues were identified for future development.
Optimal Witnessing of Healthcare IoT Data Using Blockchain Logging Contract

Verification of data generated by wearable sensors is increasingly becoming of concern to health service providers and insurance companies. These devices are typically vulnerable to a wide range of cybersecurity attacks, attempting to manipulate sensing data. Most of these disastrous attacks would remain undetected since neither healthcare servers nor Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors are aware of the existence of attackers in the middle of communication. Thus, there is a need for a verification framework that various authorities can request a verification service for the local network data of a target IoT device. In this article, we leverage blockchain as a distributed platform to realize an on-demand verification scheme. This allows authorities to automatically transact with connected devices for witnessing services. A public request is made for witness statements on the data of a target IoT that is transmitted on its local network, and subsequently, devices (in close vicinity of the target IoT) offer witnessing service. Our contributions are threefold: 1) we develop a system architecture based on blockchain and smart contract that enables authorities to dynamically avail a verification service for data of a subject device from a distributed set of witnesses which are willing to provide (in a privacy-preserving manner) their local wireless measurement in exchange of monetary return; 2) we then develop a method to optimally select witnesses in such a way that the verification error is minimized subject to monetary cost constraints; and 3) finally, we evaluate the efficacy of our scheme using real Wi-Fi session traces collected from a five-storeyed building with more than thirty access points, representative of a hospital. According to the current pricing schedule of the Ethereum public blockchain, our scheme enables healthcare authorities to verify data transmitted from a typical wearable device with the verification error of the order 0.01% at cost of less than $ 2 for 1-hr witnessing service.
A Hybrid Structural Sparsification Error Model for Image Restoration

Recent works on structural sparse representation (SSR), which exploit image nonlocal self-similarity (NSS) prior by grouping similar patches for processing, have demonstrated promising performance in various image restoration applications. However, conventional SSR-based image restoration methods directly fit the dictionaries or transforms to the internal (corrupted) image data. The trained internal models inevitably suffer from overfitting to data corruption, thus generating the degraded restoration results. In this article, we propose a novel hybrid structural sparsification error (HSSE) model for image restoration, which jointly exploits image NSS prior using both the internal and external image data that provide complementary information. Furthermore, we propose a general image restoration scheme based on the HSSE model, and an alternating minimization algorithm for a range of image restoration applications, including image inpainting, image compressive sensing and image deblocking. Extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate that the proposed HSSE-based scheme outperforms many popular or state-of-the-art image restoration methods in terms of both objective metrics and visual perception.
A Clinical Decision Support System for Predicting Invasive Breast Cancer Recurrence: Preliminary Results

The mortality associated to breast cancer is in many cases related to metastasization and recurrence. Personalized treatment strategies are critical for the outcomes improvement of BC patients and the Clinical Decision Support Systems can have an important role in medical practice. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of a prediction model of the Breast Cancer Recurrence (BCR) within five and ten years after diagnosis. The main breast cancer-related and treatment-related features of 256 patients referred to Istituto Tumori “Giovanni Paolo II” of Bari (Italy) were used to train machine learning algorithms at the-state-of-the-art. Firstly, we implemented several feature importance techniques and then we evaluated the prediction performances of BCR within 5 and 10 years after the first diagnosis by means different classifiers. By using a small number of features, the models reached highly performing results both with reference to the BCR within 5 years and within 10 years with an accuracy of 77.50% and 80.39% and a sensitivity of 92.31% and 95.83% respectively, in the hold-out sample test. Despite validation studies are needed on larger samples, our results are promising for the development of a reliable prognostic supporting tool for clinicians in the definition of personalized treatment plans.
Flux-pumped impedance-engineered broadband Josephson parametric amplifier

Broadband quantum-limited amplifiers play a critical role in the single-shot readout of superconducting qubits, but a popular implementation, the traveling wave parametric amplifier, involves a complex design and fabrication process. Here, we present a simple design for a Josephson parametric amplifier, using a lumped element resonator comprising a superconducting quantum interference device whose useful bandwidth is enhanced with an on-chip impedance-matching circuit. We demonstrate a flux-coupling geometry that maximizes the coupling to the Josephson loop and minimizes spurious excitation of the amplifier resonant circuit. The amplifier, which operates in a flux-pumped mode, is demonstrated with a power gain of more than 20 dB over a bandwidth of about 300 MHz, where approximate noise measurements indicate quantum-limited performance. A procedure is given for optimizing the bandwidth for this kind of amplifier, using a linearized circuit simulation while minimizing non-linearities.
Machine Learning in Measurement Part 2: Uncertainty Quantification

In spite of the advent of Machine Learning (ML) and its successful deployment in measurement systems, little information can be found in the literature about uncertainty quantification in these systems [1]. Uncertainty is crucial for the adoption of ML in commercial products and services. Designers are now being encouraged to be upfront about the uncertainty in their ML systems, because products that specify their uncertainty can have a significant competitive advantage and can unlock new value, reduce risk, and improve usability [2]. In this article, we will describe uncertainty quantification in ML. Because there isn't enough room in one article to explain all ML methods, we concentrate on Deep Learning (DL), which is one of the most popular and effective ML methods in I&M [3]. Please note that this article follows and uses concepts from Part 1 [4], so readers are highly encouraged to first read that part. In addition, we assume the reader has a basic understanding of both DL and uncertainty. Readers for whom this assumption is false are encouraged to first read the brief introduction to DL and its applications in I&M presented in [3] as well as the uncertainty tutorial in [5].
A new image encryption scheme based on fractional-order hyperchaotic system and multiple image fusion

Abstract A multi-image encryption scheme based on the fractional-order hyperchaotic system is designed in this paper. The chaotic characteristics of this system are analyzed by the phase diagram, Lyapunov exponent and bifurcation diagram. According to the analyses results, an interesting image encryption algorithm is proposed. Multiple grayscale images are fused into a color image using different channels. Then, the color image is scrambled and diffused in order to obtain a more secure cipher image. The pixel confusion operation and diffusion operation are assisted by fractional hyperchaotic system. Experimental simulation and test results indicate that the devised multi-image encryption scheme can effectively encrypt multiple images, which increase the efficiency of image encryption and transmission, and have good security performance.
Differential privacy in health research: A scoping review

Abstract Objective Differential privacy is a relatively new method for data privacy that has seen growing use due its strong protections that rely on added noise. This study assesses the extent of its awareness, development, and usage in health research. Materials and Methods A scoping review was conducted by searching for [“differential privacy” AND “health”] in major health science databases, with additional articles obtained via expert consultation. Relevant articles were classified according to subject area and focus. Results A total of 54 articles met the inclusion criteria. Nine articles provided descriptive overviews, 31 focused on algorithm development, 9 presented novel data sharing systems, and 8 discussed appraisals of the privacy-utility tradeoff. The most common areas of health research where differential privacy has been discussed are genomics, neuroimaging studies, and health surveillance with personal devices. Algorithms were most commonly developed for the purposes of data release and predictive modeling. Studies on privacy-utility appraisals have considered economic cost-benefit analysis, low-utility situations, personal attitudes toward sharing health data, and mathematical interpretations of privacy risk. Discussion Differential privacy remains at an early stage of development for applications in health research, and accounts of real-world implementations are scant. There are few algorithms for explanatory modeling and statistical inference, particularly with correlated data. Furthermore, diminished accuracy in small datasets is problematic. Some encouraging work has been done on decision making with regard to epsilon. The dissemination of future case studies can inform successful appraisals of privacy and utility. Conclusions More development, case studies, and evaluations are needed before differential privacy can see widespread use in health research.
A novel deep learning-based 3D cell segmentation framework for future image-based disease detection

Abstract Cell segmentation plays a crucial role in understanding, diagnosing, and treating diseases. Despite the recent success of deep learning-based cell segmentation methods, it remains challenging to accurately segment densely packed cells in 3D cell membrane images. Existing approaches also require fine-tuning multiple manually selected hyperparameters on the new datasets. We develop a deep learning-based 3D cell segmentation pipeline, 3DCellSeg, to address these challenges. Compared to the existing methods, our approach carries the following novelties: (1) a robust two-stage pipeline, requiring only one hyperparameter; (2) a light-weight deep convolutional neural network (3DCellSegNet) to efficiently output voxel-wise masks; (3) a custom loss function (3DCellSeg Loss) to tackle the clumped cell problem; and (4) an efficient touching area-based clustering algorithm (TASCAN) to separate 3D cells from the foreground masks. Cell segmentation experiments conducted on four different cell datasets show that 3DCellSeg outperforms the baseline models on the ATAS (plant), HMS (animal), and LRP (plant) datasets with an overall accuracy of 95.6%, 76.4%, and 74.7%, respectively, while achieving an accuracy comparable to the baselines on the Ovules (plant) dataset with an overall accuracy of 82.2%. Ablation studies show that the individual improvements in accuracy is attributable to 3DCellSegNet, 3DCellSeg Loss, and TASCAN, with the 3DCellSeg demonstrating robustness across different datasets and cell shapes. Our results suggest that 3DCellSeg can serve a powerful biomedical and clinical tool, such as histo-pathological image analysis, for cancer diagnosis and grading.
Intelligent passive detection of aerial target in space-air-ground integrated networks

Passive detection of moving target is an important part of intelligent surveillance. Satellite has the potential to play a key role in many applications of space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGIN). In this paper, we propose a novel intelligent passive detection method for aerial target based on reservoir computing networks. Specifically, delayed feedback networks are utilized to refine the direct signals from the satellite in the reference channels. In addition, the satellite direct wave interference in the monitoring channels adopts adaptive interference suppression using the minimum mean square error filter. Furthermore, we employ decoupling echo state networks to predict the clutter interference in the monitoring channels and construct the detection statistics accordingly. Finally, a multilayer perceptron is adopted to detect the echo signal after interference suppression. Extensive simulations is conducted to evaluate the performance of our proposed method. Results show that the detection probability is almost 100% when the signal-to-interference ratio of echo signal is −36dB, which demonstrates that our proposed method achieves efficient passive detection for aerial targets in typical SAGIN scenarios.