pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Optimal and instance-dependent guarantees for Markovian linear stochastic approximation
Authors: Wenlong Mou, Ashwin Pananjady, Martin J. Wainwright, Peter L. Bartlett
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Model Selection

We study stochastic approximation procedures for approximately solving a $d$-dimensional linear fixed point equation based on observing a trajectory of length $n$ from an ergodic Markov chain. We first exhibit a non-asymptotic bound of the order $t_{\mathrm{mix}} \tfrac{d}{n}$ on the squared error of the last iterate of a standard scheme, where $t_{\mathrm{mix}}$ is a mixing time. We then prove a non-asymptotic instance-dependent bound on a suitably averaged sequence of iterates, with a leading term that matches the local asymptotic minimax limit, including sharp dependence on the parameters $(d, t_{\mathrm{mix}})$ in the higher order terms. We complement these upper bounds with a non-asymptotic minimax lower bound that establishes the instance-optimality of the averaged SA estimator. We derive corollaries of these results for policy evaluation with Markov noise -- covering the TD($\lambda$) family of algorithms for all $\lambda \in [0, 1)$ -- and linear autoregressive models. Our instance-dependent characterizations open the door to the design of fine-grained model selection procedures for hyperparameter tuning (e.g., choosing the value of $\lambda$ when running the TD($\lambda$) algorithm).
BANMo: Building Animatable 3D Neural Models from Many Casual Videos
Authors: Gengshan Yang, Minh Vo, Natalia Neverova, Deva Ramanan, Andrea Vedaldi, Hanbyul Joo
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2022 1
Tasks: 3D Shape Reconstruction from Videos, Dynamic Reconstruction

Prior work for articulated 3D shape reconstruction often relies on specialized sensors (e.g., synchronized multi-camera systems), or pre-built 3D deformable models (e.g., SMAL or SMPL). Such methods are not able to scale to diverse sets of objects in the wild. We present BANMo, a method that requires neither a specialized sensor nor a pre-defined template shape. BANMo builds high-fidelity, articulated 3D models (including shape and animatable skinning weights) from many monocular casual videos in a differentiable rendering framework. While the use of many videos provides more coverage of camera views and object articulations, they introduce significant challenges in establishing correspondence across scenes with different backgrounds, illumination conditions, etc. Our key insight is to merge three schools of thought; (1) classic deformable shape models that make use of articulated bones and blend skinning, (2) volumetric neural radiance fields (NeRFs) that are amenable to gradient-based optimization, and (3) canonical embeddings that generate correspondences between pixels and an articulated model. We introduce neural blend skinning models that allow for differentiable and invertible articulated deformations. When combined with canonical embeddings, such models allow us to establish dense correspondences across videos that can be self-supervised with cycle consistency. On real and synthetic datasets, BANMo shows higher-fidelity 3D reconstructions than prior works for humans and animals, with the ability to render realistic images from novel viewpoints and poses. Project webpage: banmo-www.github.io .
SLIP: Self-supervision meets Language-Image Pre-training
Authors: Norman Mu, Alexander Kirillov, David Wagner, Saining Xie
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Multi-Task Learning, Representation Learning, Self-Supervised Learning

Recent work has shown that self-supervised pre-training leads to improvements over supervised learning on challenging visual recognition tasks. CLIP, an exciting new approach to learning with language supervision, demonstrates promising performance on a wide variety of benchmarks. In this work, we explore whether self-supervised learning can aid in the use of language supervision for visual representation learning. We introduce SLIP, a multi-task learning framework for combining self-supervised learning and CLIP pre-training. After pre-training with Vision Transformers, we thoroughly evaluate representation quality and compare performance to both CLIP and self-supervised learning under three distinct settings: zero-shot transfer, linear classification, and end-to-end finetuning. Across ImageNet and a battery of additional datasets, we find that SLIP improves accuracy by a large margin. We validate our results further with experiments on different model sizes, training schedules, and pre-training datasets. Our findings show that SLIP enjoys the best of both worlds: better performance than self-supervision (+8.1% linear accuracy) and language supervision (+5.2% zero-shot accuracy).
Latent Time Neural Ordinary Differential Equations
Authors: Srinivas Anumasa, P. K. Srijith
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Autonomous Driving, image-classification, Image Classification, Model Selection, Variational Inference

Neural ordinary differential equations (NODE) have been proposed as a continuous depth generalization to popular deep learning models such as Residual networks (ResNets). They provide parameter efficiency and automate the model selection process in deep learning models to some extent. However, they lack the much-required uncertainty modelling and robustness capabilities which are crucial for their use in several real-world applications such as autonomous driving and healthcare. We propose a novel and unique approach to model uncertainty in NODE by considering a distribution over the end-time $T$ of the ODE solver. The proposed approach, latent time NODE (LT-NODE), treats $T$ as a latent variable and apply Bayesian learning to obtain a posterior distribution over $T$ from the data. In particular, we use variational inference to learn an approximate posterior and the model parameters. Prediction is done by considering the NODE representations from different samples of the posterior and can be done efficiently using a single forward pass. As $T$ implicitly defines the depth of a NODE, posterior distribution over $T$ would also help in model selection in NODE. We also propose, adaptive latent time NODE (ALT-NODE), which allow each data point to have a distinct posterior distribution over end-times. ALT-NODE uses amortized variational inference to learn an approximate posterior using inference networks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches in modelling uncertainty and robustness through experiments on synthetic and several real-world image classification data.
Improving Robustness and Uncertainty Modelling in Neural Ordinary Differential Equations
Authors: Srinivas Anumasa, P. K. Srijith
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Autonomous Driving, image-classification, Image Classification, Model Selection, Variational Inference

Neural ordinary differential equations (NODE) have been proposed as a continuous depth generalization to popular deep learning models such as Residual networks (ResNets). They provide parameter efficiency and automate the model selection process in deep learning models to some extent. However, they lack the much-required uncertainty modelling and robustness capabilities which are crucial for their use in several real-world applications such as autonomous driving and healthcare. We propose a novel and unique approach to model uncertainty in NODE by considering a distribution over the end-time $T$ of the ODE solver. The proposed approach, latent time NODE (LT-NODE), treats $T$ as a latent variable and apply Bayesian learning to obtain a posterior distribution over $T$ from the data. In particular, we use variational inference to learn an approximate posterior and the model parameters. Prediction is done by considering the NODE representations from different samples of the posterior and can be done efficiently using a single forward pass. As $T$ implicitly defines the depth of a NODE, posterior distribution over $T$ would also help in model selection in NODE. We also propose, adaptive latent time NODE (ALT-NODE), which allow each data point to have a distinct posterior distribution over end-times. ALT-NODE uses amortized variational inference to learn an approximate posterior using inference networks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches in modelling uncertainty and robustness through experiments on synthetic and several real-world image classification data.
InDuDoNet+: A Deep Unfolding Dual Domain Network for Metal Artifact Reduction in CT Images
Authors: Hong Wang, Yuexiang Li, Haimiao Zhang, Deyu Meng, Yefeng Zheng
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Computed Tomography (CT), Metal Artifact Reduction

During the computed tomography (CT) imaging process, metallic implants within patients often cause harmful artifacts, which adversely degrade the visual quality of reconstructed CT images and negatively affect the subsequent clinical diagnosis. For the metal artifact reduction (MAR) task, current deep learning based methods have achieved promising performance. However, most of them share two main common limitations: 1) the CT physical imaging geometry constraint is not comprehensively incorporated into deep network structures; 2) the entire framework has weak interpretability for the specific MAR task; hence, the role of each network module is difficult to be evaluated. To alleviate these issues, in the paper, we construct a novel deep unfolding dual domain network, termed InDuDoNet+, into which CT imaging process is finely embedded. Concretely, we derive a joint spatial and Radon domain reconstruction model and propose an optimization algorithm with only simple operators for solving it. By unfolding the iterative steps involved in the proposed algorithm into the corresponding network modules, we easily build the InDuDoNet+ with clear interpretability. Furthermore, we analyze the CT values among different tissues, and merge the prior observations into a prior network for our InDuDoNet+, which significantly improve its generalization performance.Comprehensive experiments on synthesized data and clinical data substantiate the superiority of the proposed methods as well as the superior generalization performance beyond the current state-of-the-art (SOTA) MAR methods. . Code is available at \url{https://github.com/hongwang01/InDuDoNet_plus}.
Comparison and Analysis of Image-to-Image Generative Adversarial Networks: A Survey
Authors: Sagar Saxena, Mohammad Nayeem Teli
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Image-to-Image Translation, Survey

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have recently introduced effective methods of performing Image-to-Image translations. These models can be applied and generalized to a variety of domains in Image-to-Image translation without changing any parameters. In this paper, we survey and analyze eight Image-to-Image Generative Adversarial Networks: Pix2Pix, CycleGAN, CoGAN, StarGAN, MUNIT, StarGAN2, DA-GAN, and Self Attention GAN. Each of these models presented state-of-the-art results and introduced new techniques to build Image-to-Image GANs. In addition to a survey of the models, we also survey the 18 datasets they were trained on and the 9 metrics they were evaluated on. Finally, we present results of a controlled experiment for 6 of these models on a common set of metrics and datasets. The results were mixed and showed that, on certain datasets, tasks, and metrics, some models outperformed others. The last section of this paper discusses those results and establishes areas of future research. As researchers continue to innovate new Image-to-Image GANs, it is important to gain a good understanding of the existing methods, datasets, and metrics. This paper provides a comprehensive overview and discussion to help build this foundation.
Predição da Idade Cerebral a partir de Imagens de Ressonância Magnética utilizando Redes Neurais Convolucionais
Authors: Victor H. R. Oliveira, Augusto Antunes, Alexandre S. Soares, Arthur D. Reys, Robson Z. Júnior, Saulo D. S. Pedro, Danilo Silva
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00

In this work, deep learning techniques for brain age prediction from magnetic resonance images are investigated, aiming to assist in the identification of biomarkers of the natural aging process. The identification of biomarkers is useful for detecting an early-stage neurodegenerative process, as well as for predicting age-related or non-age-related cognitive decline. Two techniques are implemented and compared in this work: a 3D Convolutional Neural Network applied to the volumetric image and a 2D Convolutional Neural Network applied to slices from the axial plane, with subsequent fusion of individual predictions. The best result was obtained by the 2D model, which achieved a mean absolute error of 3.83 years. -- Neste trabalho s\~ao investigadas t\'ecnicas de aprendizado profundo para a predi\c{c}\~ao da idade cerebral a partir de imagens de resson\^ancia magn\'etica, visando auxiliar na identifica\c{c}\~ao de biomarcadores do processo natural de envelhecimento. A identifica\c{c}\~ao de biomarcadores \'e \'util para a detec\c{c}\~ao de um processo neurodegenerativo em est\'agio inicial, al\'em de possibilitar prever um decl\'inio cognitivo relacionado ou n\~ao \`a idade. Duas t\'ecnicas s\~ao implementadas e comparadas neste trabalho: uma Rede Neural Convolucional 3D aplicada na imagem volum\'etrica e uma Rede Neural Convolucional 2D aplicada a fatias do plano axial, com posterior fus\~ao das predi\c{c}\~oes individuais. O melhor resultado foi obtido pelo modelo 2D, que alcan\c{c}ou um erro m\'edio absoluto de 3.83 anos.
Towards Universal GAN Image Detection
Authors: Davide Cozzolino, Diego Gragnaniello, Giovanni Poggi, Luisa Verdoliva
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Contrastive Learning

The ever higher quality and wide diffusion of fake images have spawn a quest for reliable forensic tools. Many GAN image detectors have been proposed, recently. In real world scenarios, however, most of them show limited robustness and generalization ability. Moreover, they often rely on side information not available at test time, that is, they are not universal. We investigate these problems and propose a new GAN image detector based on a limited sub-sampling architecture and a suitable contrastive learning paradigm. Experiments carried out in challenging conditions prove the proposed method to be a first step towards universal GAN image detection, ensuring also good robustness to common image impairments, and good generalization to unseen architectures.
Prolog-based agnostic explanation module for structured pattern classification
Authors: Gonzalo Nápoles, Fabian Hoitsma, Andreas Knoben, Agnieszka Jastrzebska, Maikel Leon Espinosa
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Chatbot, Classification, counterfactual, Missing Values, Natural Language Queries

This paper presents a Prolog-based reasoning module to generate counterfactual explanations given the predictions computed by a black-box classifier. The proposed symbolic reasoning module can also resolve what-if queries using the ground-truth labels instead of the predicted ones. Overall, our approach comprises four well-defined stages that can be applied to any structured pattern classification problem. Firstly, we pre-process the given dataset by imputing missing values and normalizing the numerical features. Secondly, we transform numerical features into symbolic ones using fuzzy clustering such that extracted fuzzy clusters are mapped to an ordered set of predefined symbols. Thirdly, we encode instances as a Prolog rule using the nominal values, the predefined symbols, the decision classes, and the confidence values. Fourthly, we compute the overall confidence of each Prolog rule using fuzzy-rough set theory to handle the uncertainty caused by transforming numerical quantities into symbols. This step comes with an additional theoretical contribution to a new similarity function to compare the previously defined Prolog rules involving confidence values. Finally, we implement a chatbot as a proxy between human beings and the Prolog-based reasoning module to resolve natural language queries and generate counterfactual explanations. During the numerical simulations using synthetic datasets, we study the performance of our system when using different fuzzy operators and similarity functions. Towards the end, we illustrate how our reasoning module works using different use cases.
Run-of-Mine Stockyard Recovery Scheduling and Optimisation for Multiple Reclaimers
Authors: Hirad Assimi, Ben Koch, Chris Garcia, Markus Wagner, Frank Neumann
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Scheduling

Stockpiles are essential in the mining value chain, assisting in maximising value and production. Quality control of taken minerals from the stockpiles is a major concern for stockpile managers where failure to meet some requirements can lead to losing money. This problem was recently investigated using a single reclaimer, and basic assumptions. This study extends the approach to consider multiple reclaimers in preparing for short and long-term deliveries. The engagement of multiple reclaimers complicates the problem in terms of their interaction in preparing a delivery simultaneously and safety distancing of reclaimers. We also consider more realistic settings, such as handling different minerals with different types of reclaimers. We propose methods that construct a solution step by step to meet precedence constraints for all reclaimers in the stockyard. We study various instances of the problem using greedy algorithms, Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO), and propose an integrated local search method determining an efficient schedule. We fine-tune and compare the algorithms and show that the ACO combined with local search can yield efficient solutions.
Decentralized Task Offloading in Edge Computing: A Multi-User Multi-Armed Bandit Approach
Authors: Xiong Wang, Jiancheng Ye, John C. S. Lui
Date: 2021-12-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Edge-computing

Mobile edge computing facilitates users to offload computation tasks to edge servers for meeting their stringent delay requirements. Previous works mainly explore task offloading when system-side information is given (e.g., server processing speed, cellular data rate), or centralized offloading under system uncertainty. But both generally fall short to handle task placement involving many coexisting users in a dynamic and uncertain environment. In this paper, we develop a multi-user offloading framework considering unknown yet stochastic system-side information to enable a decentralized user-initiated service placement. Specifically, we formulate the dynamic task placement as an online multi-user multi-armed bandit process, and propose a decentralized epoch based offloading (DEBO) to optimize user rewards which are subjected under network delay. We show that DEBO can deduce the optimal user-server assignment, thereby achieving a close-to-optimal service performance and tight O(log T) offloading regret. Moreover, we generalize DEBO to various common scenarios such as unknown reward gap, dynamic entering or leaving of clients, and fair reward distribution, while further exploring when users' offloaded tasks require heterogeneous computing resources. Particularly, we accomplish a sub-linear regret for each of these instances. Real measurements based evaluations corroborate the superiority of our offloading schemes over state-of-the-art approaches in optimizing delay-sensitive rewards.
Emulation of greenhouse-gas sensitivities using variational autoencoders
Authors: Laura Cartwright, Andrew Zammit-Mangion, Nicholas M. Deutscher
Date: 2021-12-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Decoder

Flux inversion is the process by which sources and sinks of a gas are identified from observations of gas mole fraction. The inversion often involves running a Lagrangian particle dispersion model (LPDM) to generate sensitivities between observations and fluxes over a spatial domain of interest. The LPDM must be run backward in time for every gas measurement, and this can be computationally prohibitive. To address this problem, here we develop a novel spatio-temporal emulator for LPDM sensitivities that is built using a convolutional variational autoencoder (CVAE). With the encoder segment of the CVAE, we obtain approximate (variational) posterior distributions over latent variables in a low-dimensional space. We then use a spatio-temporal Gaussian process emulator on the low-dimensional space to emulate new variables at prediction locations and time points. Emulated variables are then passed through the decoder segment of the CVAE to yield emulated sensitivities. We show that our CVAE-based emulator outperforms the more traditional emulator built using empirical orthogonal functions and that it can be used with different LPDMs. We conclude that our emulation-based approach can be used to reliably reduce the computing time needed to generate LPDM outputs for use in high-resolution flux inversions.
Modeling Immunity to Malaria with an Age-Structured PDE Framework
Authors: Zhuolin Qu, Denis Patterson, Lauren Childs, Christina Edholm, Joan Ponce, Olivia Prosper, Lihong Zhao
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00

Malaria is one of the deadliest infectious diseases globally, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. It disproportionately affects young children, with two-thirds of fatalities occurring in under-fives. Individuals acquire protection from disease through repeated exposure, and this immunity plays a crucial role in the dynamics of malaria spread. We develop a novel age-structured PDE malaria model, which couples vector-host epidemiological dynamics with immunity dynamics. Our model tracks the acquisition and loss of anti-disease immunity during transmission and its corresponding nonlinear feedback onto the transmission parameters. We derive the basic reproduction number ($\mathcal{R}_0$) as the threshold condition for the stability of disease-free equilibrium; we also interpret $\mathcal{R}_0$ probabilistically as a weighted sum of cases generated by infected individuals at different infectious stages and different ages. We parametrize our model using demographic and immunological data from sub-Saharan regions. Numerical bifurcation analysis demonstrates the existence of an endemic equilibrium, and we observe a forward bifurcation in $\mathcal{R}_0$. Our numerical simulations reproduce the heterogeneity in the age distributions of immunity profiles and infection status created by frequent exposure. Motivated by the recently approved RTS,S vaccine, we also study the impact of vaccination; our results show a reduction in severe disease among young children but a small increase in severe malaria among older children due to lower acquired immunity from delayed exposure.
Integrating Quantum Processor Device and Control Optimization in a Gradient-based Framework
Authors: Xiaotong Ni, Hui-Hai Zhao, Lei Wang, Feng Wu, Jianxin Chen
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00

In a quantum processor, the device design and external controls together contribute to the quality of the target quantum operations. As we continuously seek better alternative qubit platforms, we explore the increasingly large device and control design space. Thus, optimization becomes more and more challenging. In this work, we demonstrate that the figure of merit reflecting a design goal can be made differentiable with respect to the device and control parameters. In addition, we can compute the gradient of the design objective efficiently in a similar manner to the back-propagation algorithm and then utilize the gradient to optimize the device and the control parameters jointly and efficiently. This extends the scope of the quantum optimal control to superconducting device design. We also demonstrate the viability of gradient-based joint optimization over the device and control parameters through a few examples.