Query: Analog CMOS-based resistive processing unit for deep neural network training

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Large Scale Distributed Deep Networks <=SEP=> Recent work in unsupervised feature learning and deep learning has shown that being able to train large models can dramatically improve performance. In this paper, we consider the problem of training a deep network with billions of parameters using tens of thousands of CPU cores. We have developed a software framework called DistBelief that can utilize computing clusters with thousands of machines to train large models. Within this framework, we have developed two algorithms for large-scale distributed training: (i) Downpour SGD, an asynchronous stochastic gradient descent procedure supporting a large number of model replicas, and (ii) Sandblaster, a framework that supports a variety of distributed batch optimization procedures, including a distributed implementation of L-BFGS. Downpour SGD and Sandblaster L-BFGS both increase the scale and speed of deep network training. We have successfully used our system to train a deep network 30x larger than previously reported in the literature, and achieves state-of-the-art performance on ImageNet, a visual object recognition task with 16 million images and 21k categories. We show that these same techniques dramatically accelerate the training of a more modestlysized deep network for a commercial speech recognition service. Although we focus on and report performance of these methods as applied to training large neural networks, the underlying algorithms are applicable to any gradient-based machine learning algorithm.

Learning representations by back-propagating errors <=SEP=> We describe a new learning procedure, back-propagation, for networks of neurone-like units. The procedure repeatedly adjusts the weights of the connections in the network so as to minimize a measure of the difference between the actual output vector of the net and the desired output vector. As a result of the weight adjustments, internal ‘hidden’ units which are not part of the input or output come to represent important features of the task domain, and the regularities in the task are captured by the interactions of these units. The ability to create useful new features distinguishes back-propagation from earlier, simpler methods such as the perceptron-convergence procedure1.

Deep Learning <=SEP=> Machine-learning technology powers many aspects of modern society: from web searches to content filtering on social networks to recommendations on e-commerce websites, and it is increasingly present in consumer products such as cameras and smartphones. Machine-learning systems are used to identify objects in images, transcribe speech into text, match news items, posts or products with users’ interests, and select relevant results of search. Increasingly, these applications make use of a class of techniques called deep learning. Conventional machine-learning techniques were limited in their ability to process natural data in their raw form. For decades, constructing a pattern-recognition or machine-learning system required careful engineering and considerable domain expertise to design a feature extractor that transformed the raw data (such as the pixel values of an image) into a suitable internal representation or feature vector from which the learning subsystem, often a classifier, could detect or classify patterns in the input. Representation learning is a set of methods that allows a machine to be fed with raw data and to automatically discover the representations needed for detection or classification. Deep-learning methods are representation-learning methods with multiple levels of representation, obtained by composing simple but non-linear modules that each transform the representation at one level (starting with the raw input) into a representation at a higher, slightly more abstract level. With the composition of enough such transformations, very complex functions can be learned. For classification tasks, higher layers of representation amplify aspects of the input that are important for discrimination and suppress irrelevant variations. An image, for example, comes in the form of an array of pixel values, and the learned features in the first layer of representation typically represent the presence or absence of edges at particular orientations and locations in the image. The second layer typically detects motifs by spotting particular arrangements of edges, regardless of small variations in the edge positions. The third layer may assemble motifs into larger combinations that correspond to parts of familiar objects, and subsequent layers would detect objects as combinations of these parts. The key aspect of deep learning is that these layers of features are not designed by human engineers: they are learned from data using a general-purpose learning procedure. Deep learning is making major advances in solving problems that have resisted the best attempts of the artificial intelligence community for many years. It has turned out to be very good at discovering intricate structures in high-dimensional data and is therefore applicable to many domains of science, business and government. In addition to beating records in image recognition and speech recognition, it has beaten other machine-learning techniques at predicting the activity of potential drug molecules, analysing particle accelerator data, reconstructing brain circuits, and predicting the effects of mutations in non-coding DNA on gene expression and disease. Perhaps more surprisingly, deep learning has produced extremely promising results for various tasks in natural language understanding, particularly topic classification, sentiment analysis, question answering and language translation. We think that deep learning will have many more successes in the near future because it requires very little engineering by hand, so it can easily take advantage of increases in the amount of available computation and data. New learning algorithms and architectures that are currently being developed for deep neural networks will only accelerate this progress.

Acceleration of Deep Neural Network Training with Resistive Cross-Point Devices: Design Considerations <=SEP=> In recent years, deep neural networks (DNN) have demonstrated significant business impact in large scale analysis and classification tasks such as speech recognition, visual object detection, pattern extraction, etc. Training of large DNNs, however, is universally considered as time consuming and computationally intensive task that demands datacenter-scale computational resources recruited for many days. Here we propose a concept of resistive processing unit (RPU) devices that can potentially accelerate DNN training by orders of magnitude while using much less power. The proposed RPU device can store and update the weight values locally thus minimizing data movement during training and allowing to fully exploit the locality and the parallelism of the training algorithm. We evaluate the effect of various RPU device features/non-idealities and system parameters on performance in order to derive the device and system level specifications for implementation of an accelerator chip for DNN training in a realistic CMOS-compatible technology. For large DNNs with about 1 billion weights this massively parallel RPU architecture can achieve acceleration factors of 30, 000 × compared to state-of-the-art microprocessors while providing power efficiency of 84, 000 GigaOps∕s∕W. Problems that currently require days of training on a datacenter-size cluster with thousands of machines can be addressed within hours on a single RPU accelerator. A system consisting of a cluster of RPU accelerators will be able to tackle Big Data problems with trillions of parameters that is impossible to address today like, for example, natural speech recognition and translation between all world languages, real-time analytics on large streams of business and scientific data, integration, and analysis of multimodal sensory data flows from a massive number of IoT (Internet of Things) sensors.

MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters <=SEP=> MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large datasets that is amenable to a broad variety of real-world tasks. Users specify the computation in terms of a map and a reduce function, and the underlying runtime system automatically parallelizes the computation across large-scale clusters of machines, handles machine failures, and schedules inter-machine communication to make efficient use of the network and disks. Programmers find the system easy to use: more than ten thousand distinct MapReduce programs have been implemented internally at Google over the past four years, and an average of one hundred thousand MapReduce jobs are executed on Google's clusters every day, processing a total of more than twenty petabytes of data per day.

On-line cursive script recognition using time-delay neural networks and hidden Markov models <=SEP=> We present a writer-independent system for online handwriting recognition that can handle a variety of writing styles including cursive script and handprinting. The input to our system contains the pen trajectory information, encoded as a time-ordered sequence of feature vectors. A time-delay neural network is used to estimate a posteriori probabilities for characters in a word. A hidden Markov model segments the word in a way that optimizes the global word score, using a dictionary in the process. A geometrical normalization scheme and a fast but efficient dictionary search are also presented. Trained on 20 k words from 59 writers, using a 25 k-word dictionary, our system reached recognition rates of 89% for characters and 80% for words on test data from a disjoint set of writers.

Force of Habit and Information Systems Usage: Theory and Initial Validation <=SEP=> Over the last two decades, information systems (IS) research has primarily focused on people’s conscious (intentional) behavior when trying to explain and predict IS usage. Consequently, almost no research has investigated the potential importance of subconscious (automatic) behaviors, also known as habits. This study represents a first step toward validating the idea that one can add explanatory power to a behavioral model such as Ajzen’s [1985] theory of planned behavior (TPB) by including the habit construct. We conducted a two-stage questionnaire-based survey involving two different groups of students who had access to a sophisticated internet-based communication tool (IBCT). These data were used to test a behavioral model integrating theoretical constructs of TPB and a relevant subset of Triandis’ [1980] behavioral framework. Our findings highlight the importance of considering both conscious (intentions) and subconscious (habits) factors in explaining usage behavior. Furthermore, we share our observations about antecedents of IBCT usage in the educational context. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

Cross-Cultural Software Production and Use: A Structurational Analysis <=SEP=> This paper focuses on cross-cultural software production and use, which is increasingly common in today's more globalized world. A theoretical basis for analysis is developed, using concepts drawn from structuration theory. The theory is illustrated using two cross-cultural case studies. It is argued that structurational analysis provides a deeper examination of cross-cultural working and IS than is found in the current literature, which is dominated by Hofstede-type studies, in particular, the theoretical approach can be used to analyze cross-cultural conflict and contradiction, cultural heterogeneity, detailed work patterns, and the dynamic nature of culture. The paper contributes to the growing body of literature that emphasizes the essential role of cross-cultural understanding in contemporary society. 'Michael D. Myers was the accepting senior editor for this paper. introduction There has been much debate over the last decade about the major sociat transformations taking place in the world such as the increasing interconnectedness of different societies, the compression of time and space, and an intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole (Robertson 1992), Such changes are often tabeted with the term globatization, atthough the precise nature of this phenomenon is highly complex on closer examination. For example. Beck (2000) distinguishes between globality, the change in consciousness of the world as a single entity, and globaiism, the ideology of neoliberatism which argues that the world market eliminates or supplants the importance of locat potiticat action. Despite the complexity of the globalization phenomena, all commentators would agree that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are deeply implicated in the changes that are taking ptace through their abitity to enabte new modes of work, communication, and organization MiS Quarterly Vol. 26 No. 4. pp. 359-380/December 2002 359 Walsham/Cross-Cultural Software Production & Use across time and space. For example, the influential work of Castells (1996, 1997, 1998) argues that we are in the "information age" where information generation, processing, and transformation are fundamental to societal functioning and societal change, and where ICTs enable the pervasive expansion of networking throughout the social structure. However, does globalization, and the related spread of ICTs, imply that the world is becoming a homogeneous arena for gtobat business and gtobal attitudes, with differences between organizations and societies disappearing? There are many authors who take exception to this conclusion. For exampie, Robertson (1992) discussed the way in which imported themes are indigenized in particular societies with tocat culture constraining receptivity to some ideas rather than others, and adapting them in specific ways. He cited Japan as a good example of these glocalization processes. White accepting the idea of time-space compression facilitated by ICTs, Robertson argued that one of its main consequences is an exacerbation of collisions between gtobat, societat, and communat attitudes. Simitarty, Appadural {1997), coming from a nonWestern background, argued against the gtobat homogenization thesis on the grounds that difl'erent societies witt appropriate the "materials of modernity" differently depending on their specific geographies, histories, and languages. Watsham {2001) devetoped a related argument, with a specific focus on the rote of ICTs, concluding that globat diversity needs to be a key focus when devetoping and using such technotogies. If these latter arguments are broadty correct, then working with tCTs in and across different cuttures should prove to be problematic, in that there wilt be different views ofthe relevance, appticabitity, and vatue of particular modes of working and use of ICTs which may produce conflict. For exampte, technotogy transfer from one society to another involves the importing of that technology into an "atien" cutturat context where its value may not be similarly perceived to that in its original host cutture. Simitarty, cross-cuttural communication through tCTs, or cross-cultural information systems (IS) devetopment teams, are likely to confront issues of incongruence of values and attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to examine a particular topic within the area of cross-cutturat working and tCTs, namety that of software production and use; in particutar, where the software is not devetoped in and for a specific cutturat group. A primary goat is to devetop a theoreticat basis for anatysis of this area. Key eiements of this basis, which draws on structuration theory, are described in the next section of the paper, tn order to iltustrate the theoreticat basis and its vatue in analyzing real situations, the subsequent sections draw on the field data from two published case studies of cross-cultural software development and application. There is an extensive titerature on cross-cutturat working and IS, and the penultimate section ofthe paper reviews key etements of this titerature, and shows how the anatysis of this paper makes a new contribution. In particular, it witt be argued that the structurationat analysis enabtes a more sophisticated and detailed consideration of issues in cross-culturat software production under four specific headings: cross-cultural contradiction and conflict; cultural heterogeneity; detailed work patterns in different cuttures; and the dynamic, emergent nature of cutture. The final section of the paper wilt summarize some theoretical and practical implications. Structuration Theory, Cuiture and iS The theoretical basis for this paper draws on structuration theory {Giddens 1979, 1984). This theory has been highty inftuentiat in sociology and the social sciences generalty since Giddens first developed the ideas some 20 years ago. In addition, the theory has received considerable attention in the IS field {for a good review, see Jones 1998). The focus here, however, wilt be on how structuration theory can offer a new way of looking 360 MIS Quarterly Vol. 26 No. 4/December 2002 Walsham/Cross-Cuitural Software Production & Use Table 1. Structuration Theory, Culture, and ICTs: Some Key Concepts

Collaborative matrix factorization mechanism for group recommendation in big data-based library systems <=SEP=> Purpose –Academic groups are designed specifically for researchers. A group recommendation procedure is essential to support scholars’ research-based social activities. However, group recommendation methods are rarely applied in online libraries and they often suffer from scalability problem in big data context. The purpose of this paper is to facilitate academic group activities in big data-based library systems by recommending satisfying articles for academic groups. Design/methodology/approach – The authors propose a collaborative matrix factorization (CoMF) mechanism and implement paralleled CoMF under Hadoop framework. Its rationale is collaboratively decomposing researcher-article interaction matrix and group-article interaction matrix. Furthermore, three extended models of CoMF are proposed. Findings – Empirical studies on CiteULike data set demonstrate that CoMF and three variants outperform baseline algorithms in terms of accuracy and robustness. The scalability evaluation of paralleled CoMF shows its potential value in scholarly big data environment. Research limitations/implications – The proposed methods fill the gap of group-article recommendation in online libraries domain. The proposed methods have enriched the group recommendation methods by considering the interaction effects between groups and members. The proposed methods are the first attempt to implement group recommendation methods in big data contexts. Practical implications – The proposed methods can improve group activity effectiveness and information shareability in academic groups, which are beneficial to membership retention and enhance the service quality of online library systems. Furthermore, the proposed methods are applicable to big data contexts and make library system services more efficient. Social implications – The proposed methods have potential value to improve scientific collaboration and research innovation. Originality/value – The proposed CoMF method is a novel group recommendation method based on the collaboratively decomposition of researcher-article matrix and group-article matrix. The process indirectly reflects the interaction between groups and members, which accords with actual library environments and provides an interpretable recommendation result.

Interacting with in-vehicle systems: understanding, measuring, and evaluating attention <=SEP=> In-vehicle systems research is becoming a significant field as the market for in-vehicle systems continue to grow. As a consequence, researchers are increasingly concerned with opportunities and limitations of HCI in a moving vehicle. Especially aspects of attention constitute a challenge for in-vehicle systems development. This paper seeks to remedy this by defining and exemplifying attention understandings. 100 papers were classified in a two-fold perspective; under what settings are in-vehicle systems evaluated and how is driver attention measured in regard to in-vehicle systems HCI. A breakdown of the distribution of driving settings and measures is presented and the impact of driver attention is discussed. The classification revealed that most of the studies were conducted in driving simulators and real traffic driving, while lateral and longitudinal control and eye behaviour were the most used measures. Author

Chemi-net: a graph convolutional network for accurate drug property prediction <=SEP=> Absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) studies are critical for drug discovery. Conventionally, these tasks, together with other chemical property predictions, rely on domain-specific feature descriptors, or fingerprints. Following the recent success of neural networks, we developed Chemi-Net, a completely data-driven, domain knowledge-free, deep learning method for ADME property prediction. To compare the relative performance of Chemi-Net with Cubist, one of the popular machine learning programs used by Amgen, a large-scale ADME property prediction study was performed on-site at Amgen. The results showed that our deep neural network method improved current methods by a large margin. We foresee that the significantly increased accuracy of ADME prediction seen with Chemi-Net over Cubist will greatly accelerate drug discovery.

Threatening faces and social anxiety: a literature review. <=SEP=> A threatening facial expression is a potent social sign of hostility or dominance. During the past 20 years, photographs of threatening faces have been increasingly included as stimuli in studies with socially anxious participants, based on the hypothesis that a threatening face is especially salient to people with fears of social interaction or negative evaluation. The purpose of this literature review is to systematically evaluate the accumulated research and suggest possible avenues for further research. The main conclusion is that photographs of threatening faces engage a broad range of perceptual processes in socially anxious participants, particularly when exposure times are very short.

A 1 . 5V , 10-bit , 14 . 3-MS / s CMOS Pipeline Analog-to-Digital Converter <=SEP=> A 1.5-V, 10-bit, 14.3-MS/s pipeline analog-to-digital converter was implemented in a 0.6m CMOS technology. Emphasis was placed on observing device reliability constraints at low voltage. MOS switches were implemented without lowthreshold devices by using a bootstrapping technique that does not subject the devices to large terminal voltages. The converter achieved a peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio of 58.5 dB, maximum differential nonlinearity of 0.5 least significant bit (LSB), maximum integral nonlinearity of 0.7 LSB, and a power consumption of 36 mW.

Remote Sensing Image Classification Based on Stacked Denoising Autoencoder <=SEP=> Focused on the issue that conventional remote sensing image classification methods have run into the bottlenecks in accuracy, a new remote sensing image classification method inspired by deep learning is proposed, which is based on Stacked Denoising Autoencoder. First, the deep network model is built through the stacked layers of Denoising Autoencoder. Then, with noised input, the unsupervised Greedy layer-wise training algorithm is used to train each layer in turn for more robust expressing, characteristics are obtained in supervised learning by Back Propagation (BP) neural network, and the whole network is optimized by error back propagation. Finally, Gaofen-1 satellite (GF-1) remote sensing data are used for evaluation, and the total accuracy and kappa accuracy reach 95.7% and 0.955, respectively, which are higher than that of the Support Vector Machine and Back Propagation neural network. The experiment results show that the proposed method can effectively improve the accuracy of remote sensing image classification.

Opportunistic Computation Offloading in Mobile Edge Cloud Computing Environments <=SEP=> The dynamic mobility and limitations in computational power, battery resources, and memory availability are main bottlenecks in fully harnessing mobile devices as data mining platforms. Therefore, the mobile devices are augmented with cloud resources in mobile edge cloud computing (MECC) environments to seamlessly execute data mining tasks. The MECC infrastructures provide compute, network, and storage services in one-hop wireless distance from mobile devices to minimize the latency in communication as well as provide localized computations to reduce the burden on federated cloud systems. However, when and how to offload the computation is a hard problem. In this paper, we present an opportunistic computation offloading scheme to efficiently execute data mining tasks in MECC environments. The scheme provides the suitable execution mode after analyzing the amount of unprocessed data, privacy configurations, contextual information, and available on-board local resources (memory, CPU, and battery power). We develop a mobile application for online activity recognition and evaluate the proposed scheme using the event data stream of 5 million activities collected from 12 users for 15 days. The experiments show significant improvement in execution time and battery power consumption resulting in 98% data reduction.

Dry electrodes for electrocardiography. <=SEP=> Patient biopotentials are usually measured with conventional disposable Ag/AgCl electrodes. These electrodes provide excellent signal quality but are irritating for long-term use. Skin preparation is usually required prior to the application of electrodes such as shaving and cleansing with alcohol. To overcome these difficulties, researchers and caregivers seek alternative electrodes that would be acceptable in clinical and research environments. Dry electrodes that operate without gel, adhesive or even skin preparation have been studied for many decades. They are used in research applications, but they have yet to achieve acceptance for medical use. So far, a complete comparison and evaluation of dry electrodes is not well described in the literature. This work compares dry electrodes for biomedical use and physiological research, and reviews some novel systems developed for cardiac monitoring. Lastly, the paper provides suggestions to develop a dry-electrode-based system for mobile and long-term cardiac monitoring applications.

A wearable fingertip haptic device with 3 DoF asymmetric 3-RSR kinematics <=SEP=> A novel wearable haptic device for modulating skin stretch at the fingertip is presented. Rendering of skin stretch in 3 degrees of freedom (DoF), with contact - no contact capabilities, was implemented through rigid parallel kinematics. The novel asymmetrical three revolute-spherical-revolute (3-RSR) configuration allowed compact dimensions with minimum encumbrance of the hand workspace and minimum inter-finger interference. A differential method for solving the non-trivial inverse kinematics is proposed and implemented in real time for controlling the position of the skin tactor. Experiments involving the grasping of a virtual object were conducted using two devices (thumb and index fingers) in a group of 4 subjects: results showed that participants performed the grasping task more precisely and with grasping forces closer to the expected natural behavior when the proposed device provided haptic feedback.

Deformable Classifiers <=SEP=> Geometric variations of objects, which do not modify the object class, pose a major challenge for object recognition. These variations could be rigid as well as non-rigid transformations. In this paper, we design a framework for training deformable classifiers, where latent transformation variables are introduced, and a transformation of the object image to a reference instantiation is computed in terms of the classifier output, separately for each class. The classifier outputs for each class, after transformation, are compared to yield the final decision. As a by-product of the classification this yields a transformation of the input object to a reference pose, which can be used for downstream tasks such as the computation of object support. We apply a two-step training mechanism for our framework, which alternates between optimizing over the latent transformation variables and the classifier parameters to minimize the loss function. We show that multilayer perceptrons, also known as deep networks, are well suited for this approach and achieve state of the art results on the rotated MNIST and the Google Earth dataset, and produce competitive results on MNIST and CIFAR-10 when training on smaller subsets of training data.

Evolutionary Delivery versus the "waterfall model" <=SEP=> The conventional wisdom of planning software engineering projects, using the widely cited "waterfall model" is not the only useful software development process model. In fact, the "waterfall model" may be unrealistic, and dangerous to the primary objectives of any software project.The alternative model, which I choose to call "evolutionary delivery" is not widely taught or practiced yet. But there is already more than a decade of practical experience in using it. In various forms. It is quite clear from these experiences that evolutionary delivery is a powerful general tool for both software development and associated systems development.Almost all experienced software developers do make use of some of the ideas in evolutionary development at one time or another. But, this is often unplanned, informal and it is an incomplete exploitation of this powerful method. This paper will try to expose the theoretical and practical aspects of the method in a fuller perspective. We need to learn the theory fully, so that we can apply and learn it completely.

Deep Generative Models with Learnable Knowledge Constraints <=SEP=> The broad set of deep generative models (DGMs) has achieved remarkable advances. However, it is often difficult to incorporate rich structured domain knowledge with the end-to-end DGMs. Posterior regularization (PR) offers a principled framework to impose structured constraints on probabilistic models, but has limited applicability to the diverse DGMs that can lack a Bayesian formulation or even explicit density evaluation. PR also requires constraints to be fully specified a priori, which is impractical or suboptimal for complex knowledge with learnable uncertain parts. In this paper, we establish mathematical correspondence between PR and reinforcement learning (RL), and, based on the connection, expand PR to learn constraints as the extrinsic reward in RL. The resulting algorithm is modelagnostic to apply to any DGMs, and is flexible to adapt arbitrary constraints with the model jointly. Experiments on human image generation and templated sentence generation show models with learned knowledge constraints by our algorithm greatly improve over base generative models.

A Taxonomy of Deep Convolutional Neural Nets for Computer Vision <=SEP=> Traditional architectures for solving computer vision problems and the degree of success they enjoyed have been heavily reliant on hand-crafted features. However, of late, deep learning techniques have offered a compelling alternative – that of automatically learning problem-specific features. With this new paradigm, every problem in computer vision is now being re-examined from a deep learning perspective. Therefore, it has become important to understand what kind of deep networks are suitable for a given problem. Although general surveys of this fast-moving paradigm (i.e., deep-networks) exist, a survey specific to computer vision is missing. We specifically consider one form of deep networks widely used in computer vision – convolutional neural networks (CNNs). We start with “AlexNet” as our base CNN and then examine the broad variations proposed over time to suit different applications. We hope that our recipe-style survey will serve as a guide, particularly for novice practitioners intending to use deep-learning techniques for computer vision.

Glaucoma-Deep : Detection of Glaucoma Eye Disease on Retinal Fundus Images using Deep Learning Detection of Glaucoma by Abbas <=SEP=> Detection of glaucoma eye disease is still a challenging task for computer-aided diagnostics (CADx) systems. During eye screening process, the ophthalmologists measures the glaucoma by structure changes in optic disc (OD), loss of nerve fibres (LNF) and atrophy of the peripapillary region (APR). In retinal images, the automated CADx systems are developed to assess this eye disease through segmentation-based hand-crafted features. Therefore in this paper, the convolutional neural network (CNN) unsupervised architecture was used to extract the features through multilayer from raw pixel intensities. Afterwards, the deep-belief network (DBN) model was used to select the most discriminative deep features based on the annotated training dataset. At last, the final decision is performed by softmax linear classifier to differentiate between glaucoma and non-glaucoma retinal fundus image. This proposed system is known as Glaucoma-Deep and tested on 1200 retinal images obtained from publically and privately available datasets. To evaluate the performance of Glaucoma-Deep system, the sensitivity (SE), specificity (SP), accuracy (ACC), and precision (PRC) statistical measures were utilized. On average, the SE of 84.50%, SP of 98.01%, ACC of 99% and PRC of 84% values were achieved. Comparing to state-of-the-art systems, the Nodular-Deep system accomplished significant higher results. Consequently, the Glaucoma-Deep system can easily recognize the glaucoma eye disease to solve the problem of clinical experts during eye-screening process on large-scale environments. Keywords—Fundus imaging; glaucoma; diabetic retinopathy; deep learning; convolutional neural networks; deep belief network

On Laser Ranging Based on High-Speed/Energy Laser Diode Pulses and Single-Photon Detection Techniques <=SEP=> This paper discusses the construction principles and performance of a pulsed time-of-flight (TOF) laser radar based on high-speed (FWHM ~100 ps) and high-energy (~1 nJ) optical transmitter pulses produced with a specific laser diode working in an “enhanced gain-switching” regime and based on single-photon detection in the receiver. It is shown by analysis and experiments that single-shot precision at the level of 2W3 cm is achievable. The effective measurement rate can exceed 10 kHz to a noncooperative target (20% reflectivity) at a distance of > 50 m, with an effective receiver aperture size of 2.5 cm2. The effect of background illumination is analyzed. It is shown that the gating of the SPAD detector is an effective means to avoid the blocking of the receiver in a high-level background illumination case. A brief comparison with pulsed TOF laser radars employing linear detection techniques is also made.

Detecting Structural Similarities between XML Documents <=SEP=> In this paper we propose a technique for detecting the similarity in the structure of XML documents. The technique is based on the idea of representing the structure of an XML document as a time series in which each occurrence of a tag corresponds to a given impulse. By analyzing the frequencies of the corresponding Fourier transform, we can hence state the degree of similarity between documents. The efficiency and effectiveness of this approach are compelling when compared with traditional ones.

Translating Learning into Numbers: A Generic Framework for Learning Analytics <=SEP=> With the increase in available educational data, it is expected that Learning Analytics will become a powerful means to inform and support learners, teachers and their institutions in better understanding and predicting personal learning needs and performance. However, the processes and requirements behind the beneficial application of Learning and Knowledge Analytics as well as the consequences for learning and teaching are still far from being understood. In this paper, we explore the key dimensions of Learning Analytics (LA), the critical problem zones, and some potential dangers to the beneficial exploitation of educational data. We propose and discuss a generic design framework that can act as a useful guide for setting up Learning Analytics services in support of educational practice and learner guidance, in quality assurance, curriculum development, and in improving teacher effectiveness and efficiency. Furthermore, the presented article intends to inform about soft barriers and limitations of Learning Analytics. We identify the required skills and competences that make meaningful use of Learning Analytics data possible to overcome gaps in interpretation literacy among educational stakeholders. We also discuss privacy and ethical issues and suggest ways in which these issues can be addressed through policy guidelines and best practice examples.

Trust-aware crowdsourcing with domain knowledge <=SEP=> The rise of social network and crowdsourcing platforms makes it convenient to take advantage of the collective intelligence to estimate true labels of questions of interest. However, input from workers is often noisy and even malicious. Trust is used to model workers in order to better estimate true labels of questions. We observe that questions are often not independent in real life applications. Instead, there are logical relations between them. Similarly, workers that provide answers are not independent of each other either. Answers given by workers with similar attributes tend to be correlated. Therefore, we propose a novel unified graphical model consisting of two layers. The top layer encodes domain knowledge which allows users to express logical relations using first-order logic rules and the bottom layer encodes a traditional crowdsourcing graphical model. Our model can be seen as a generalized probabilistic soft logic framework that encodes both logical relations and probabilistic dependencies. To solve the collective inference problem efficiently, we have devised a scalable joint inference algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers. Finally, we demonstrate that our model is superior to state-of-the-art by testing it on multiple real-world datasets.

GORAM – Group ORAM for Privacy and Access Control in Outsourced Personal Records 1 <=SEP=> Cloud storage has rapidly become a cornerstone of many IT infrastructures, constituting a seamless solution for the backup, synchronization, and sharing of large amounts of data. Putting user data in the direct control of cloud service providers, however, raises security and privacy concerns related to the integrity of outsourced data, the accidental or intentional leakage of sensitive information, the profiling of user activities and so on. Furthermore, even if the cloud provider is trusted, users having access to outsourced files might be malicious and misbehave. These concerns are particularly serious in sensitive applications like personal health records and credit score systems. To tackle this problem, we present GORAM, a cryptographic system that protects the secrecy and integrity of outsourced data with respect to both an untrusted server and malicious clients, guarantees the anonymity and unlinkability of accesses to such data, and allows the data owner to share outsourced data with other clients, selectively granting them read and write permissions. GORAM is the first system to achieve such a wide range of security and privacy properties for outsourced storage. In the process of designing an efficient construction, we developed two new, generally applicable cryptographic schemes, namely, batched zero-knowledge proofs of shuffle and an accountability technique based on chameleon signatures, which we consider of independent interest. We implemented GORAM in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and ran a performance evaluation demonstrating the scalability and efficiency of our construction.

Position Control of a Permanent Magnet DC Motor by Model Reference Adaptive Control <=SEP=> Model reference adaptive control (MRAC) is one of the various techniques of solving the control problem when the parameters of the controlled process are poorly known or vary during normal operation. To understand the dynamic behavior of a dc motor it is required to know its parameters; armature inductance and resistance (La, Ra), inertia of the rotor (Jm), motor constant (Km), friction coefficient (Bm), etc. To identify these parameters, some experiments should be performed. However, motor parameters change under operation according to several conditions. Therefore, the performance of controller, which has been designed considering constant motor parameters becomes poorer. For this reason, a model reference adaptive control method is proposed to control the position of a dc motor without requiring fixed motor parameters. Experimental results show how well this method controls the position of a permanent magnet dc motor.

Solutions Strategies for Die Shift Problem in Wafer Level Compression Molding <=SEP=> Die shift problem that arises during the wafer molding process in embedded micro wafer level package fabrication was systematically analyzed and solution strategies were developed. A methodology to measure die shift was developed and applied to create maps of die shift on an 8 inch wafer. A total of 256 dies were embedded in an 8 inch mold compound wafer using compression molding. Thermal and cure shrinkages of mold compound are determined to be the primary reasons for die shift in wafer molding. Die shift value increases as the distance from the center of the wafer increases. Pre-compensation of die shift during pick and place is demonstrated as an effective method to control die shift. Applying pre-compensation method 99% of dies can be achieved to have die shift values of less than 40 μm. Usage of carrier wafer during wafer molding reduces the maximum die shift in a wafer from 633 μm to 79 μm. Die area/package area ratio has a strong influence on the die shift values. Die area/package area ratios of 0.81, 0.49, and 0.25 lead to maximum die shift values of 26, 76, and 97 μ.m, respectively. Wafer molding using low coefficient of thermal expansion (7 × 10-6/°C) and low cure shrinkage (0.094%) mold compounds is demonstrated to yield maximum die shift value of 28 μm over the whole 8 inch wafer area.

Gender differences in participation and reward on Stack Overflow <=SEP=> Programming is a valuable skill in the labor market, making the underrepresentation of women in computing an increasingly important issue. Online question and answer platforms serve a dual purpose in this field: they form a body of knowledge useful as a reference and learning tool, and they provide opportunities for individuals to demonstrate credible, verifiable expertise. Issues, such as male-oriented site design or overrepresentation of men among the site’s elite may therefore compound the issue of women’s underrepresentation in IT. In this paper we audit the differences in behavior and outcomes between men and women on Stack Overflow, the most popular of these Q&A sites. We observe significant differences in how men and women participate in the platform and how successful they are. For example, the average woman has roughly half of the reputation points, the primary measure of success on the site, of the average man. Using an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, an econometric technique commonly applied to analyze differences in wages between groups, we find that most of the gap in success between men and women can be explained by differences in their activity on the site and differences in how these activities are rewarded. Specifically, 1) men give more answers than women and 2) are rewarded more for their answers on average, even when controlling for possible confounders such as tenure or buy-in to the site. Women ask more questions and gain more reward per question. We conclude with a hypothetical redesign of the site’s scoring system based on these behavioral differences, cutting the reputation gap in half.