pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Graph-based Deep Learning for Communication Networks: A Survey
Authors: Weiwei Jiang
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Learning, Graph Attention, Survey

Communication networks are important infrastructures in contemporary society. There are still many challenges that are not fully solved and new solutions are proposed continuously in this active research area. In recent years, to model the network topology, graph-based deep learning has achieved the state-of-the-art performance in a series of problems in communication networks. In this survey, we review the rapidly growing body of research using different graph-based deep learning models, e.g. graph convolutional and graph attention networks, in various problems from different types of communication networks, e.g. wireless networks, wired networks, and software defined networks. We also present a well-organized list of the problem and solution for each study and identify future research directions. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first survey that focuses on the application of graph-based deep learning methods in communication networks involving both wired and wireless scenarios. To track the follow-up research, a public GitHub repository is created, where the relevant papers will be updated continuously.
Musical Prosody-Driven Emotion Classification: Interpreting Vocalists Portrayal of Emotions Through Machine Learning
Authors: Nicholas Farris, Brian Model, Richard Savery, Gil Weinberg
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00
Tasks: BIG-bench Machine Learning, Emotion Classification, Emotion Recognition, Information Retrieval, Music Emotion Recognition, Music Information Retrieval, Retrieval

The task of classifying emotions within a musical track has received widespread attention within the Music Information Retrieval (MIR) community. Music emotion recognition has traditionally relied on the use of acoustic features, verbal features, and metadata-based filtering. The role of musical prosody remains under-explored despite several studies demonstrating a strong connection between prosody and emotion. In this study, we restrict the input of traditional machine learning algorithms to the features of musical prosody. Furthermore, our proposed approach builds upon the prior by classifying emotions under an expanded emotional taxonomy, using the Geneva Wheel of Emotion. We utilize a methodology for individual data collection from vocalists, and personal ground truth labeling by the artist themselves. We found that traditional machine learning algorithms when limited to the features of musical prosody (1) achieve high accuracies for a single singer, (2) maintain high accuracy when the dataset is expanded to multiple singers, and (3) achieve high accuracies when trained on a reduced subset of the total features.
Learning Hard Optimization Problems: A Data Generation Perspective
Authors: James Kotary, Ferdinando Fioretto, Pascal Van Hentenryck
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2021 12

Optimization problems are ubiquitous in our societies and are present in almost every segment of the economy. Most of these optimization problems are NP-hard and computationally demanding, often requiring approximate solutions for large-scale instances. Machine learning frameworks that learn to approximate solutions to such hard optimization problems are a potentially promising avenue to address these difficulties, particularly when many closely related problem instances must be solved repeatedly. Supervised learning frameworks can train a model using the outputs of pre-solved instances. However, when the outputs are themselves approximations, when the optimization problem has symmetric solutions, and/or when the solver uses randomization, solutions to closely related instances may exhibit large differences and the learning task can become inherently more difficult. This paper demonstrates this critical challenge, connects the volatility of the training data to the ability of a model to approximate it, and proposes a method for producing (exact or approximate) solutions to optimization problems that are more amenable to supervised learning tasks. The effectiveness of the method is tested on hard non-linear nonconvex and discrete combinatorial problems.
Collection and harmonization of system logs and prototypal Analytics services with the Elastic (ELK) suite at the INFN-CNAF computing centre
Authors: Tommaso Diotalevi, Antonio Falabella, Barbara Martelli, Diego Michelotto, Lucia Morganti, Daniele Bonacorsi, Luca Giommi, Simone Rossi Tisbeni
Date: 2021-05-13 00:00:00

The distributed Grid infrastructure for High Energy Physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva comprises a set of computing centres, spread all over the world, as part of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). In Italy, the Tier-1 functionalities are served by the INFN-CNAF data center, which provides also computing and storage resources to more than twenty non-LHC experiments. For this reason, a high amount of logs are collected each day from various sources, which are highly heterogeneous and difficult to harmonize. In this contribution, a working implementation of a system that collects, parses and displays the log information from CNAF data sources and the investigation of a Machine Learning based predictive maintenance system, is presented.
Consensus Multiplicative Weights Update: Learning to Learn using Projector-based Game Signatures
Authors: Nelson Vadori, Rahul Savani, Thomas Spooner, Sumitra Ganesh
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00

Cheung and Piliouras (2020) recently showed that two variants of the Multiplicative Weights Update method - OMWU and MWU - display opposite convergence properties depending on whether the game is zero-sum or cooperative. Inspired by this work and the recent literature on learning to optimize for single functions, we introduce a new framework for learning last-iterate convergence to Nash Equilibria in games, where the update rule's coefficients (learning rates) along a trajectory are learnt by a reinforcement learning policy that is conditioned on the nature of the game: \textit{the game signature}. We construct the latter using a new decomposition of two-player games into eight components corresponding to commutative projection operators, generalizing and unifying recent game concepts studied in the literature. We compare the performance of various update rules when their coefficients are learnt, and show that the RL policy is able to exploit the game signature across a wide range of game types. In doing so, we introduce CMWU, a new algorithm that extends consensus optimization to the constrained case, has local convergence guarantees for zero-sum bimatrix games, and show that it enjoys competitive performance on both zero-sum games with constant coefficients and across a spectrum of games when its coefficients are learnt.
Training Energy-Efficient Deep Spiking Neural Networks with Time-to-First-Spike Coding
Authors: Seongsik Park, Sungroh Yoon
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00

The tremendous energy consumption of deep neural networks (DNNs) has become a serious problem in deep learning. Spiking neural networks (SNNs), which mimic the operations in the human brain, have been studied as prominent energy-efficient neural networks. Due to their event-driven and spatiotemporally sparse operations, SNNs show possibilities for energy-efficient processing. To unlock their potential, deep SNNs have adopted temporal coding such as time-to-first-spike (TTFS)coding, which represents the information between neurons by the first spike time. With TTFS coding, each neuron generates one spike at most, which leads to a significant improvement in energy efficiency. Several studies have successfully introduced TTFS coding in deep SNNs, but they showed restricted efficiency improvement owing to the lack of consideration for efficiency during training. To address the aforementioned issue, this paper presents training methods for energy-efficient deep SNNs with TTFS coding. We introduce a surrogate DNN model to train the deep SNN in a feasible time and analyze the effect of the temporal kernel on training performance and efficiency. Based on the investigation, we propose stochastically relaxed activation and initial value-based regularization for the temporal kernel parameters. In addition, to reduce the number of spikes even further, we present temporal kernel-aware batch normalization. With the proposed methods, we could achieve comparable training results with significantly reduced spikes, which could lead to energy-efficient deep SNNs.
SBML2Modelica: integrating biochemical models within open-standard simulation ecosystems
Authors: Filippo Maggioli, Toni Mancini, Enrico Tronci
Date: 2021-06-01 00:00:00

Motivation: SBML is the most widespread language for the definition of biochemical models. Although dozens of SBML simulators are available, there is a general lack of support to the integration of SBML models within open-standard general-purpose simulation ecosystems. This hinders co-simulation and integration of SBML models within larger model networks, in order to, e.g. enable in silico clinical trials of drugs, pharmacological protocols, or engineering artefacts such as biomedical devices against Virtual Physiological Human models. Modelica is one of the most popular existing open-standard general-purpose simulation languages, supported by many simulators. Modelica models are especially suited for the definition of complex networks of heterogeneous models from virtually all application domains. Models written in Modelica (and in 100+ other languages) can be readily exported into black-box Functional Mock-Up Units (FMUs), and seamlessly co-simulated and integrated into larger model networks within open-standard language-independent simulation ecosystems. Results: In order to enable SBML model integration within heterogeneous model networks, we present SBML2Modelica, a software system translating SBML models into well-structured, user-intelligible, easily modifiable Modelica models. SBML2Modelica is SBML Level 3 Version 2-compliant and succeeds on 96.47% of the SBML Test Suite Core (with a few rare, intricate and easily avoidable combinations of constructs unsupported and cleanly signalled to the user). Our experimental campaign on 613 models from the BioModels database (with up to 5438 variables) shows that the major open-source (general-purpose) Modelica and FMU simulators achieve performance comparable to state-of-the-art specialized SBML simulators. Availability and implementation: https://bitbucket.org/mclab/sbml2modelica
A Guidance and Maneuvering Control System Design with Anti-collision Using Stream Functions with Vortex Flows for Autonomous Marine Vessels
Authors: HongYu Zhou, Zhengru Ren, Mathias Marley, Roger Skjetne
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Collision Avoidance

Autonomous marine vessels are expected to avoid inter-vessel collisions and comply with the international regulations for safe voyages. This paper presents a stepwise path planning method using stream functions. The dynamic flow of fluids is used as a guidance model, where the collision avoidance in static environments is achieved by applying the circular theorem in the sink flow. We extend this method to dynamic environments by adding vortex flows in the flow field. The stream function is recursively updated to enable on the fly waypoint decisions. The vessel avoids collisions and also complies with several rules of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea. The method is conceptually and computationally simple and convenient to tune, and yet versatile to handle complex and dense marine traffic with multiple dynamic obstacles. The ship dynamics are taken into account, by using B\'{e}zier curves to generate a sufficiently smooth path with feasible curvature. Numerical simulations are conducted to verify the proposed method.
Classification of Audio Segments in Call Center Recordings using Convolutional Recurrent Neural Networks
Authors: Şükrü Ozan
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Genre classification, Management, Music Genre Classification

Detailed statistical analysis of call center recordings is critical in the customer relationship management point of view. With the recent advances in artificial intelligence, many tasks regarding the calculation of call statistics are now performed automatically. This work proposes a neural network framework where the aim is to correctly identify audio segments and classify them as either customer or agent sections. Accurately identifying these sections gives a fair metric for evaluating agents' performances. We inherited the convolutional recurrent neural network (CRNN) architecture commonly used for such problems as music genre classification. We also tested the same architecture's performance, where the previous class information and the gender information of speakers are also added to the training data labels. We saw that CRNN could generalize the training data and perform well on validation data for this problem with and without the gender information. Moreover, even the training was performed using Turkish speech samples; the trained network was proven to achieve high accuracy for call center recordings in other languages like German and English.
A Residual Network based Deep Learning Model for Detection of COVID-19 from Cough Sounds
Authors: Annesya Banerjee, Achal Nilhani
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00
Tasks: Specificity

The present work proposes a deep-learning-based approach for the classification of COVID-19 coughs from non-COVID-19 coughs and that can be used as a low-resource-based tool for early detection of the onset of such respiratory diseases. The proposed system uses the ResNet-50 architecture, a popularly known Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for image recognition tasks, fed with the log-Mel spectrums of the audio data to discriminate between the two types of coughs. For the training and validation of the proposed deep learning model, this work utilizes the Track-1 dataset provided by the DiCOVA Challenge 2021 organizers. Additionally, to increase the number of COVID-positive samples and to enhance variability in the training data, it has also utilized a large open-source database of COVID-19 coughs collected by the EPFL CoughVid team. Our developed model has achieved an average validation AUC of 98.88%. Also, applying this model on the Blind Test Set released by the DiCOVA Challenge, the system has achieved a Test AUC of 75.91%, Test Specificity of 62.50%, and Test Sensitivity of 80.49%. Consequently, this submission has secured 16th position in the DiCOVA Challenge 2021 leader-board.
Bayesian Risk Markov Decision Processes
Authors: Yifan Lin, Yuxuan Ren, Enlu Zhou
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00

We consider finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes where parameters, such as transition probabilities, are unknown and estimated from data. The popular distributionally robust approach to addressing the parameter uncertainty can sometimes be overly conservative. In this paper, we propose a new formulation, Bayesian risk Markov Decision Process (BR-MDP), to address parameter uncertainty in MDPs, where a risk functional is applied in nested form to the expected total cost with respect to the Bayesian posterior distribution of the unknown parameters. The proposed formulation provides more flexible risk attitutes towards parameter uncertainty and takes into account the availability of data in future times stages. To solve the proposed formulation with the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) risk functional, we propose an efficient approximation algorithm by deriving an analytical approximation of the value function and utilizing the convexity of CVaR. We demonstrate the empirical performance of the BR-MDP formulation and proposed algorithms on a gambler's betting problem and an inventory control problem.
Interdependence of Growth, Structure, Size and Resource Consumption During an Economic Growth Cycle
Authors: Carey W. King
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00

All economies require physical resource consumption to grow and maintain their structure. The modern economy is additionally characterized by private debt. The Human and Resources with MONEY (HARMONEY) economic growth model links these features using a stock and flow consistent framework in physical and monetary units. Via an updated version, we explore the interdependence of growth and three major structural metrics of an economy. First, we show that relative decoupling of gross domestic product (GDP) from resource consumption is an expected pattern that occurs because of physical limits to growth, not a response to avoid physical limits. While an increase in resource efficiency of operating capital does increase the level of relative decoupling, so does a change in pricing from one based on full costs to one based only on marginal costs that neglects depreciation and interest payments leading to higher debt ratios. Second, if assuming full labor bargaining power for wages, when a previously-growing economy reaches peak resource extraction and GDP, wages remain high but profits and debt decline to zero. By removing bargaining power, profits can remain positive at the expense of declining wages. Third, the distribution of intermediate transactions within the input-output table of the model follows the same temporal pattern as in the post-World War II U.S. economy. These results indicate that the HARMONEY framework enables realistic investigation of interdependent structural change and trade-offs between economic distribution, size, and resources consumption.
Coordination of operational planning and real-time optimization in microgrids
Authors: Jonathan Dumas, Selmane Dakir, Clément Liu, Bertrand Cornélusse
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00

Hierarchical microgrid control levels range from distributed device level controllers that run at a high frequency to centralized controllers optimizing market integration that run much less frequently. Centralized controllers are often subdivided into operational planning controllers that optimize decisions over a time horizon of one or several days, and real-time optimization controllers that deal with actions in the current market period. The coordination of these levels is of paramount importance. In this paper, we propose a value function-based approach as a way to propagate information from operational planning to real-time optimization. We apply this method to an environment where operational planning, using day-ahead forecasts, optimizes at a market period resolution the decisions to minimize the total energy cost and revenues, the peak consumption and injection-related costs, and plans for reserve requirements. While real-time optimization copes with the forecast errors and yields implementable actions based on real-time measurements. The approach is compared to a rule-based controller on three use cases, and its sensitivity to forecast error is assessed.
Low-bandwidth Modular Mathematical Modeling of DC Microgrid Systems for Control Development with Application to Shipboard Power Systems
Authors: Mehrzad Mohammadi Bijaieh, Satish Vedula, Olugbenga Moses Anubi
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00

In recent years, DC and AC microgrid (MG) systems have attracted a major attention due to various potential for integration of future technology into conventional systems and control. The integration of such technology requires appropriate tools for complex design, analysis and optimization. This paper presents a mathematical low-bandwidth modeling (LBM) approach that can be used for control development in DC and further be extended to AC MG systems. In this work, first a simplified mathematical model of a medium voltage DC (MVDC) shipboard MG system is presented, next, the overall system-level connection convention is presented to display the overall mathematical coupling of the individual sub-systems, then, a simplified example of the control development is presented, and last, the overall system under a test scenario is implemented in Simulink Real-time.
State Estimation in Unobservable Power Systems via Graph Signal Processing Tools
Authors: Lital Dabush, Ariel Kroizer, Tirza Routtenberg
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00
Tasks: State Estimation

We consider the problem of estimating the states in an unobservable power system. To this end, we propose novel graph signal processing (GSP) methods. For simplicity, we start with analyzing the DC power flow (DC-PF) model and then extend our algorithms to the AC power flow (AC-PF) model. The main assumption behind the proposed GSP approach is that the grid states, which include the vector of phases and the vector of the magnitudes of the voltages in the system, is a smooth graph signal with respect to the system admittance matrix that represents the underlying graph. Thus, the first step in this paper is to validate the graph-smoothness assumption of the states, both empirically and theoretically. Then, we develop the regularized GSP weighted least squares (GSP-WLS) state estimator, which does not require observability of the network. We propose a sensor placement strategy that aims to optimize the estimation performance of the GSP-WLS estimator. Finally, we extend the GSP-WLS estimator method to the AC-PF model by integrating a smoothness regularization term into the Gauss-Newton algorithm. Numerical results on the IEEE 118-bus system demonstrate that the new GSP methods outperform commonly-used estimation approaches and are robust to missing data.
Sneak Attack against Mobile Robotic Networks under Formation Control
Authors: Yushan Li, Jianping He, Xuda Ding, Lin Cai, Xinping Guan
Date: 2021-06-04 00:00:00

The security of mobile robotic networks (MRNs) has been an active research topic in recent years. This paper demonstrates that the observable interaction process of MRNs under formation control will present increasingly severe threats. Specifically, we find that an external attack robot, who has only partial observation over MRNs while not knowing the system dynamics or access, can learn the interaction rules from observations and utilize them to replace a target robot, destroying the cooperation performance of MRNs. We call this novel attack as sneak, which endows the attacker with the intelligence of learning knowledge and is hard to be tackled by traditional defense techniques. The key insight is to separately reveal the internal interaction structure within robots and the external interaction mechanism with the environment, from the coupled state evolution influenced by the model-unknown rules and unobservable part of the MRN. To address this issue, we first provide general interaction process modeling and prove the learnability of the interaction rules. Then, with the learned rules, we design an Evaluate-Cut-Restore (ECR) attack strategy considering the partial interaction structure and geometric pattern. We also establish the sufficient conditions for a successful sneak with maximum control impacts over the MRN. Extensive simulations illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed attack.