Query: Chinese/English mixed Character Segmentation as Semantic Segmentation

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Multi-scale Patch Aggregation (MPA) for Simultaneous Detection and Segmentation <=SEP=> Aiming at simultaneous detection and segmentation (SD-S), we propose a proposal-free framework, which detect and segment object instances via mid-level patches. We design a unified trainable network on patches, which is followed by a fast and effective patch aggregation algorithm to infer object instances. Our method benefits from end-to-end training. Without object proposal generation, computation time can also be reduced. In experiments, our method yields results 62.1% and 61.8% in terms of mAPr on VOC2012 segmentation val and VOC2012 SDS val, which are state-of-the-art at the time of submission. We also report results on Microsoft COCO test-std/test-dev dataset in this paper.

Learning to simplify: fully convolutional networks for rough sketch cleanup <=SEP=> In this paper, we present a novel technique to simplify sketch drawings based on learning a series of convolution operators. In contrast to existing approaches that require vector images as input, we allow the more general and challenging input of rough raster sketches such as those obtained from scanning pencil sketches. We convert the rough sketch into a simplified version which is then amendable for vectorization. This is all done in a fully automatic way without user intervention. Our model consists of a fully convolutional neural network which, unlike most existing convolutional neural networks, is able to process images of any dimensions and aspect ratio as input, and outputs a simplified sketch which has the same dimensions as the input image. In order to teach our model to simplify, we present a new dataset of pairs of rough and simplified sketch drawings. By leveraging convolution operators in combination with efficient use of our proposed dataset, we are able to train our sketch simplification model. Our approach naturally overcomes the limitations of existing methods, e.g., vector images as input and long computation time; and we show that meaningful simplifications can be obtained for many different test cases. Finally, we validate our results with a user study in which we greatly outperform similar approaches and establish the state of the art in sketch simplification of raster images.

Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution <=SEP=> We consider image transformation problems, where an input image is transformed into an output image. Recent methods for such problems typically train feed-forward convolutional neural networks using a per-pixel loss between the output and ground-truth images. Parallel work has shown that high-quality images can be generated by defining and optimizing perceptual loss functions based on high-level features extracted from pretrained networks. We combine the benefits of both approaches, and propose the use of perceptual loss functions for training feed-forward networks for image transformation tasks. We show results on image style transfer, where a feed-forward network is trained to solve the optimization problem proposed by Gatys et al in real-time. Compared to the optimization-based method, our network gives similar qualitative results but is three orders of magnitude faster. We also experiment with single-image super-resolution, where replacing a per-pixel loss with a perceptual loss gives visually pleasing results.

Fully convolutional networks for semantic segmentation <=SEP=> 

Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition <=SEP=> In this work we investigate the effect of the convolutional n etwork depth on its accuracy in the large-scale image recognition setting. Our main contribution is a thorough evaluation of networks of increasing depth, which shows that a significant improvement on the prior-art configurations can be achi eved by pushing the depth to 16–19 weight layers. These findings were the basis of our ImageNet Challenge 2014 submission, where our team secured the first a nd he second places in the localisation and classification tracks respec tively. We also show that our representations generalise well to other datasets, whe re t y achieve the stateof-the-art results. Importantly, we have made our two bestp rforming ConvNet models publicly available to facilitate further research o n the use of deep visual representations in computer vision.

Scientific Table Search Using Keyword Queries <=SEP=> Tables are common and important in scientific documents, yet most text-based document search systems do not capture structures and semantics specific to tables. How to bridge different types of mismatch between keywords queries and scientific tables and what influences ranking quality needs to be carefully investigated. This paper considers the structure of tables and gives different emphasis to table components. On the query side, thanks to external knowledge such as knowledge bases and ontologies, key concepts are extracted and used to build structured queries, and target quantity types are identified and used to expand original queries. A probabilistic framework is proposed to incorporate structural and semantic information from both query and table sides. We also construct and release TableArXiv, a high quality dataset with 105 queries and corresponding relevance judgements for scientific table search. Experiments demonstrate significantly higher accuracy overall and at the top of the rankings than several baseline methods.

Decision support for Cybersecurity risk planning <=SEP=> a r t i c l e i n f o Security countermeasures help ensure the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of information systems by preventing or mitigating asset losses from Cybersecurity attacks. Due to uncertainty, the financial impact of threats attacking assets is often difficult to measure quantitatively, and thus it is difficult to prescribe which countermeasures to employ. In this research, we describe a decision support system for calculating the uncertain risk faced by an organization under cyber attack as a function of uncertain threat rates, countermeasure costs, and impacts on its assets. The system uses a genetic algorithm to search for the best combination of countermeasures, allowing the user to determine the preferred tradeoff between the cost of the portfolio and resulting risk. Data collected from manufacturing firms provide an example of results under realistic input conditions. Assuring a secure information technology (IT) environment for the transaction of commerce is a major concern. The magnitude of the task is growing yearly, as attackers become more knowledgeable, more determined, and bolder in their efforts. According to a lead security expert at International Data Corporation, a global provider of market intelligence and advisory services for the IT community, " Emerging new attack vectors, more targeted campaigns, compliance, and the layering of new technologies on the corporate infrastructure are all factors having a tremendous impact on the overall risk to an organization " [21]. Given that corporate expenditures are usually a good indicator of the level of concern about an issue, security is obviously near the top of many IT executives' lists. According to IDC, the global market for providers of information security services is projected to exceed $32.5 billion in 2010 [21]. The New York Times recently noted that " the intrusion into Google's computers and related attacks from within China on some thirty other companies point to the rising sophistication of such assaults and the vulnerability of even the best defenses " [25]. The Times further states that, according to the Computer Security Institute, malware infections are up from one-half to almost two-thirds of companies surveyed last year, at an average cost of $235,000 for each organization. Finally, the newspaper observes, malware is being exploited in new terrains with malicious code that turns on cellphone microphones and cameras for the purpose of industrial spying [25]. Because of the variety of methods attackers use to try to infiltrate and disrupt …

Memory reduction method for deep neural network training <=SEP=> Training deep neural networks requires a large amount of memory, making very deep neural networks difficult to fit on accelerator memories. In order to overcome this limitation, we present a method to reduce the amount of memory for training a deep neural network. The method enables to suppress memory increase during the backward pass, by reusing the memory regions allocated for the forward pass. Experimental results exhibit our method reduced the occupied memory size in training by 44.7% on VGGNet with no accuracy affection. Our method also enabled training speedup by increasing the mini batch size up to double.

MATLAB based code for 3 D joint inversion of Magnetotelluric and Direct Current resistivity imaging data <=SEP=> 24 th EM Induction Workshop, Helsingør, Denmark, August 12-19, 2018 1 /4 MATLAB based code for 3D joint inversion of Magnetotelluric and Direct Current resistivity imaging data M. Israil 1 , A. Singh 1 Anita Devi 1 , and Pravin K.Gupta 1 1 Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, 247667, India, mohammad.israil@gmail.com

An Efficient Privacy-Preserving Ranked Keyword Search Method <=SEP=> Cloud data owners prefer to outsource documents in an encrypted form for the purpose of privacy preserving. Therefore it is essential to develop efficient and reliable ciphertext search techniques. One challenge is that the relationship between documents will be normally concealed in the process of encryption, which will lead to significant search accuracy performance degradation. Also the volume of data in data centers has experienced a dramatic growth. This will make it even more challenging to design ciphertext search schemes that can provide efficient and reliable online information retrieval on large volume of encrypted data. In this paper, a hierarchical clustering method is proposed to support more search semantics and also to meet the demand for fast ciphertext search within a big data environment. The proposed hierarchical approach clusters the documents based on the minimum relevance threshold, and then partitions the resulting clusters into sub-clusters until the constraint on the maximum size of cluster is reached. In the search phase, this approach can reach a linear computational complexity against an exponential size increase of document collection. In order to verify the authenticity of search results, a structure called minimum hash sub-tree is designed in this paper. Experiments have been conducted using the collection set built from the IEEE Xplore. The results show that with a sharp increase of documents in the dataset the search time of the proposed method increases linearly whereas the search time of the traditional method increases exponentially. Furthermore, the proposed method has an advantage over the traditional method in the rank privacy and relevance of retrieved documents.

Distributed Denial of Service: Taxonomies of Attacks, Tools, and Countermeasures <=SEP=> Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have become a large problem for users of computer systems connected to the Internet. DDoS attackers hijack secondary victim systems using them to wage a coordinated large-scale attack against primary victim systems. As new countermeasures are developed to prevent or mitigate DDoS attacks, attackers are constantly developing new methods to circumvent these new countermeasures. In this paper, we describe DDoS attack models and propose taxonomies to characterize the scope of DDoS attacks, the characteristics of the software attack tools used, and the countermeasures available. These taxonomies illustrate similarities and patterns in different DDoS attacks and tools, to assist in the development of more generalized solutions to countering DDoS attacks, including new derivative attacks.

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Data-efficient hand motor imagery decoding in EEG-BCI by using Morlet wavelets & Common Spatial Pattern algorithms <=SEP=> EEG-based Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are quite noisy brain signals recorded from the scalp (electroencephalography, EEG) to translate the user's intent into action. This is usually achieved by looking at the pattern of brain activity across many trials while the subject is imagining the performance of an instructed action - the process known as motor imagery. Nevertheless, existing motor imagery classification algorithms do not always achieve good performances because of the noisy and non-stationary nature of the EEG signal and inter-subject variability. Thus, current EEG BCI takes a considerable upfront toll on patients, who have to submit to lengthy training sessions before even being able to use the BCI. In this study, we developed a data-efficient classifier for left/right hand motor imagery by combining in our pattern recognition both the oscillation frequency range and the scalp location. We achieve this by using a combination of Morlet wavelet and Common Spatial Pattern theory to deal with nonstationarity and noise. The system achieves an average accuracy of 88% across subjects and was trained by about a dozen training (10-15) examples per class reducing the size of the training pool by up to a 100-fold, making it very data-efficient way for EEG BCI.

Cluster-Based Scalable Network Services <=SEP=> We identify three fundamental requirements for scalable network services: incremental scalability and overflow growth provisioning, 24x7 availability through fault masking, and costeffectiveness. We argue that clusters of commodity workstations interconnected by a high-speed SAN are exceptionally well-suited to meeting these challenges for Internet-server workloads, provided the software infrastructure for managing partial failures and administering a large cluster does not have to be reinvented for each new service. To this end, we propose a general, layered architecture for building cluster-based scalable network services that encapsulates the above requirements for reuse, and a service-programming model based on composable workers that perform transformation, aggregation, caching, and customization (TACC) of Internet content. For both performance and implementation simplicity, the architecture and TACC programming model exploit BASE, a weaker-than-ACID data semantics that results from trading consistency for availability and relying on soft state for robustness in failure management. Our architecture can be used as an “off the shelf” infrastructural platform for creating new network services, allowing authors to focus on the “content” of the service (by composing TACC building blocks) rather than its implementation. We discuss two real implementations of services based on this architecture: TranSend, a Web distillation proxy deployed to the UC Berkeley dialup IP population, and HotBot, the commercial implementation of the Inktomi search engine. We present detailed measurements of TranSend’s performance based on substantial client traces, as well as anecdotal evidence from the TranSend and HotBot experience, to support the claims made for the architecture.

Multi-scale CNN Stereo and Pattern Removal Technique for Underwater Active Stereo System <=SEP=> Demands on capturing dynamic scenes of underwater environments are rapidly growing. Passive stereo is applicable to capture dynamic scenes, however the shape with textureless surfaces or irregular reﬂections cannot be recovered by the technique. In our system, we add a pattern projector to the stereo camera pair so that artiﬁcial textures are augmented on the objects. To use the system at underwater environments, several problems should be compensated, i.e., refraction, disturbance by ﬂuctuation and bubbles. Further, since surface of the objects are interfered by the bubbles, projected patterns, etc., those noises and patterns should be removed from captured images to recover original texture. To solve these problems, we propose three approaches; a depth-dependent calibration, Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)-stereo method and CNN-based texture recovery method. A depth-dependent calibration I sour analysis to ﬁnd the acceptable depth range for approximation by center projection to ﬁnd the certain target depth for calibration. In terms of CNN stereo, unlike common CNN based stereo methods which do not consider strong disturbances like refraction or bubbles, we designed a novel CNN architecture for stereo matching using multi-scale information, which is intended to be robust against such disturbances. Finally, we propose a multi-scale method for bubble and a projected-pattern removal method using CNNs to recover original textures. Experimental results are shown to prove the effectiveness of our method compared with the state of the art techniques. Furthermore, reconstruction of a live swimming ﬁsh is demonstrated to conﬁrm the feasibility of our techniques.

Advances in Digital Forensics XIII <=SEP=> In digital forensics, examinations are carried out to explain events and demonstrate the root cause from a number of plausible causes. Yin’s approach to case study research offers a systematic process for investigating occurrences in their real-world contexts. The approach is well suited to examining isolated events and also addresses questions about causality and the reliability of findings. The techniques that make Yin’s approach suitable for research also apply to digital forensic examinations. The merits of case study research are highlighted in previous work that established the suitability of the case study research method for conducting digital forensic examinations. This research extends the previous work by demonstrating the practicality of Yin’s case study method in examining digital events. The research examines the relationship between digital evidence – the effect – and its plausible causes, and how patterns can be identified and applied to explain the events. Establishing these patterns supports the findings of a forensic examination. Analytic strategies and techniques inherent in Yin’s case study method are applied to identify and analyze patterns in order to establish the findings of a digital forensic examination.

A Machine Learning Approach for SQL Queries Response Time Estimation in the Cloud <=SEP=> Cloud computing provides on-demand services with pay-as-you-go model. In this sense, customers expect quality from providers where QoS control over DBMSs services demands decision making, usually based on performance aspects. It is essential that the system be able to assimilate the characteristics of the application in order to determine the execution time for its queries' execution. Machine learning techniques are a promising option in this context, since they o er a wide range of algorithms that build predictive models for this purpose based on the past observations of the demand and on the DBMS system behavior. In this work, we propose and evaluate the use of regression methods for modeling the SQL query execution time in the cloud. This process uses di erent techniques, such as bag-of-words, statistical lter and genetic algorithms. We use K-Fold Cross-Validation for measuring the quality of the models in each step. Experiments were carried out based on data from database systems in the cloud generated by the TPC-C benchmark.

Ontology based context modeling and reasoning using OWL <=SEP=> Here we propose an OWL encoded context ontology (CONON) for modeling context in pervasive computing environments, and for supporting logic-based context reasoning. CONON provides an upper context ontology that captures general concepts about basic context, and also provides extensibility for adding domain-specific ontology in a hierarchical manner. Based on this context ontology, we have studied the use of logic reasoning to check the consistency of context information, and to reason over low-level, explicit context to derive high-level, implicit context. By giving a performance study for our prototype, we quantitatively evaluate the feasibility of logic based context reasoning for nontime-critical applications in pervasive computing environments, where we always have to deal carefully with the limitation of computational resources.

OPINE: Extracting Product Features and Opinions from Reviews <=SEP=> Consumers have to often wade through a large number of on-line reviews in order to make an informed product choice. We introduce OPINE, an unsupervised, high-precision information extraction system which mines product reviews in order to build a model of product features and their evaluation by reviewers.

Latent Variable PixelCNNs for Natural Image Modeling <=SEP=> We study probabilistic models of natural images and extend the autoregressive family of PixelCNN models by incorporating latent variables. Subsequently, we describe two new generative image models that exploit different image transformations as latent variables: a quantized grayscale view of the image or a multi-resolution image pyramid. The proposed models tackle two known shortcomings of existing PixelCNN models: 1) their tendency to focus on low-level image details, while largely ignoring high-level image information, such as object shapes, and 2) their computationally costly procedure for image sampling. We experimentally demonstrate benefits of our LatentPixelCNN models, in particular showing that they produce much more realistically looking image samples than previous stateof-the-art probabilistic models.

Top-down control of visual attention in object detection <=SEP=> Current computational models of visual attention focus on bottom-up information and ignore scene context. However, studies in visual cognition show that humans use context to facilitate object detection in natural scenes by directing their attention or eyes to diagnostic regions. Here we propose a model of attention guidance based on global scene config­ uration. We show that the statistics of low-level features across the scene image determine where a specific object (e.g. a person) should be located. Human eye movements show that regions chosen by the top-down model agree with regions scrutinized by human observers performing a visual search task for people. The results validate the proposition that top-down information from visual context modulates the saliency of image regions during the task of object de­ tection. Contextual information provides a shortcut for effi­ cient object detection systems.

Continuous software engineering: A roadmap and agenda <=SEP=> Throughout its short history, software development has been characterized by harmful disconnects between important activities such as planning, development and implementation. The problem is further exacerbated by the episodic and infrequent performance of activities such as planning, testing, integration and releases. Several emerging phenomena reflect attempts to address these problems. For example, Continuous Integration is a practice which has emerged to eliminate discontinuities between development and deployment. In a similar vein, the recent emphasis on DevOps recognizes that the integration between software development and its operational deployment needs to be a continuous one. We argue a similar continuity is required between business strategy and development, BizDev being the term we coin for this. These disconnects are even more problematic given the need for reliability and resilience in the complex and data-intensive systems being developed today. We identify a number of continuous activities which together we label as ‘Continuous ∗’ (i.e. Continuous Star) which we present as part of an overall roadmap for Continuous Software engineering. We argue for a continuous (but not necessarily rapid) software engineering delivery pipeline. We conclude the paper with a research agenda. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Stable Marriage with Ties and Unacceptable Partners <=SEP=> An instance of the classical stable marriage problem involves n men and n women, and each person ranks all n members of the opposite sex in strict order of preference. The effect of allowing ties in the preference lists has been investigated previously, and three natural definitions of stability arise. In this paper, we extend this study by allowing a preference list to involve ties and/or be incomplete. We show that, under the weakest notion of stability, the stable matchings need not be all of the same cardinality, and the decision problem related to finding a maximum cardinality stable matching is NP-complete, even if the ties occur in the preference lists of one sex only. This result has important implications for practical matching schemes such as the well-known National Resident Matching Program [9]. In the cases of the other two notions of stability, Irving [5] has described algorithms for testing whether a stable matching exists, and for constructing such a matching if one does exist, where a preference list is complete but may involve ties. We demonstrate how to extend these algorithms to the case where a preference list may be incomplete and/or involve ties.

Speech recognition with primarily temporal cues. <=SEP=> Nearly perfect speech recognition was observed under conditions of greatly reduced spectral information. Temporal envelopes of speech were extracted from broad frequency bands and were used to modulate noises of the same bandwidths. This manipulation preserved temporal envelope cues in each band but restricted the listener to severely degraded information on the distribution of spectral energy. The identification of consonants, vowels, and words in simple sentences improved markedly as the number of bands increased; high speech recognition performance was obtained with only three bands of modulated noise. Thus, the presentation of a dynamic temporal pattern in only a few broad spectral regions is sufficient for the recognition of speech.

Soft decoding of JPEG 2000 compressed images using bit-rate-driven deep convolutional neural networks <=SEP=> Lossy image compression methods always introduce various unpleasant artifacts into the compressed results, especially at low bit-rates. In recent years, many effective soft decoding methods for JPEG compressed images have been proposed. However, to the best of our knowledge, very few works have been done on soft decoding of JPEG 2000 compressed images. Inspired by the outstanding performance of Convolution Neural Network (CNN) in various computer vision tasks, we presents a soft decoding method for JPEG 2000 by using multiple bit-rate-driven deep CNNs. More specifically, in training stage, we train a series of deep CNNs using lots of high quality training images and the corresponding JPEG 2000 compressed images at different coding bit-rates. In testing stage, for an input compressed image, the CNN trained with the nearest coding bit-rate is selected to perform soft decoding. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented soft decoding framework, which greatly improves the visual quality and objective scores of JPEG 2000 compressed images.

Satisfaction, trust and online purchase intention: A study of consumer perceptions <=SEP=> This paper tries to do the research of analyzing the relation of the customer trust, the customer satisfaction and purchase intention under the electronic commerce shopping environment. Drawing on the theory of customer trust, customer satisfaction and purchase intention, based on a survey of 102 respondents from the University in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the results showed that there is significant correlation between satisfaction and trust, satisfaction and purchase intention, trust and purchase intention, and more than 50% of respondents chose Taobao and Tmall, and the second is Amazon when they shopping onling. It could be expected that this kind of study is able to provide suggestion and guide for internet merchant.

Discovering Temporal Retweeting Patterns for Social Media Marketing Campaigns <=SEP=> Social media has become one of the most popular marketing channels for many companies, which aims at maximizing their influence by various marketing campaigns conducted from their official accounts on social networks. However, most of these marketing accounts merely focus on the contents of their tweets. Less effort has been made on understanding tweeting time, which is a major contributing factor in terms of attracting customers' attention and maximizing the influence of a social marketing campaign. To that end, in this paper, we provide a focused study of temporal retweeting patterns and their influence on social media marketing campaigns. Specifically, we investigate the users' retweeting patterns by modeling their retweeting behaviors as a generative process, which considers temporal, social, and topical factors. Moreover, we validate the predictive power of the model on the dataset collected from Sina Weibo, the most popular micro blog platform in China. By discovering the temporal retweeting patterns, we analyze the temporal popular topics and recommend tweets to users in a time-aware manner. Finally, experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other baseline methods. This model is applicable for companies to conduct their marketing campaigns at the right time on social media.

From learning models of natural image patches to whole image restoration <=SEP=> Learning good image priors is of utmost importance for the study of vision, computer vision and image processing applications. Learning priors and optimizing over whole images can lead to tremendous computational challenges. In contrast, when we work with small image patches, it is possible to learn priors and perform patch restoration very efficiently. This raises three questions - do priors that give high likelihood to the data also lead to good performance in restoration? Can we use such patch based priors to restore a full image? Can we learn better patch priors? In this work we answer these questions. We compare the likelihood of several patch models and show that priors that give high likelihood to data perform better in patch restoration. Motivated by this result, we propose a generic framework which allows for whole image restoration using any patch based prior for which a MAP (or approximate MAP) estimate can be calculated. We show how to derive an appropriate cost function, how to optimize it and how to use it to restore whole images. Finally, we present a generic, surprisingly simple Gaussian Mixture prior, learned from a set of natural images. When used with the proposed framework, this Gaussian Mixture Model outperforms all other generic prior methods for image denoising, deblurring and inpainting.

Note-Taking With Computers : Exploring Alternative Strategies for Improved Recall <=SEP=> Three experiments examined note-taking strategies and their relation to recall. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed either to take organized lecture notes or to try and transcribe the lecture, and they either took their notes by hand or typed them into a computer. Those instructed to transcribe the lecture using a computer showed the best recall on immediate tests, and the subsequent experiments focused on note-taking using computers. Experiment 2 showed that taking organized notes produced the best recall on delayed tests. In Experiment 3, however, when participants were given the opportunity to study their notes, those who had tried to transcribe the lecture showed better recall on delayed tests than those who had taken organized notes. Correlational analyses of data from all 3 experiments revealed that for those who took organized notes, working memory predicted note-quantity, which predicted recall on both immediate and delayed tests. For those who tried to transcribe the lecture, in contrast, only note-quantity was a consistent predictor of recall. These results suggest that individuals who have poor working memory (an ability traditionally thought to be important for note-taking) can still take effective notes if they use a note-taking strategy (transcribing using a computer) that can help level the playing field for students of diverse cognitive abilities.

Analytical Tools for Blockchain: Review, Taxonomy and Open Challenges <=SEP=> Bitcoin has introduced a new concept that could feasibly revolutionise the entire Internet as it exists, and positively impact on many types of industries including, but not limited to, banking, public sector and supply chain. This innovation is grounded on pseudo-anonymity and strives on its innovative decentralised architecture based on the blockchain technology. Blockchain is pushing forward a race of transaction-based applications with trust establishment without the need for a centralised authority, promoting accountability and transparency within the business process. However, a blockchain ledger (e.g., Bitcoin) tend to become very complex and specialised tools, collectively called “Blockchain Analytics”, are required to allow individuals, law enforcement agencies and service providers to search, explore and visualise it. Over the last years, several analytical tools have been developed with capabilities that allow, e.g., to map relationships, examine flow of transactions and filter crime instances as a way to enhance forensic investigations. This paper discusses the current state of blockchain analytical tools and presents a thematic taxonomy model based on their applications. It also examines open challenges for future development and research.