A scoping review of gaze and eye tracking-based control methods for assistive robotic arms

Abstract: Background: Assistive Robotic Arms are designed to assist physically disabled people with daily activities. Existing joysticks and head controls are not applicable for severely disabled people such as people with Locked-in Syndrome. Therefore, eye tracking control is part of ongoing research. The related literature spans many disciplines, creating a heterogeneous field that makes it difficult to gain an overview. Objectives: This work focuses on ARAs that are controlled by gaze and eye movements. By answering the research questions, this paper provides details on the design of the systems, a comparison of input modalities, methods for measuring the performance of these controls, and an outlook on research areas that gained interest in recent years. Methods: This review was conducted as outlined in the PRISMA 2020 Statement. After identifying a wide range of approaches in use the authors decided to use the PRISMA-ScR extension for a scoping review to present the results. The identification process was carried out by screening three databases. After the screening process, a snowball search was conducted. Results: 39 articles and 6 reviews were included in this article. Characteristics related to the system and study design were extracted and presented divided into three groups based on the use of eye tracking. Conclusion: This paper aims to provide an overview for researchers new to the field by offering insight into eye tracking based robot controllers. We have identified open questions that need to be answered in order to provide people with severe motor function loss with systems that are highly useable and accessible.


Multi-Identity Recognition of Darknet Vendors Based on Metric Learning

Abstract: Dark web vendor identification can be seen as an authorship aliasing problem, aiming to determine whether different accounts on different markets belong to the same real-world vendor, in order to locate cybercriminals involved in dark web market transactions. Existing open-source datasets for dark web marketplaces are outdated and cannot simulate real-world situations, while data labeling methods are difficult and suffer from issues such as inaccurate labeling and limited cross-market research. The problem of identifying vendors’ multiple identities on the dark web involves a large number of categories and a limited number of samples, making it difficult to use traditional multiclass classification models. To address these issues, this paper proposes a metric learning-based method for dark web vendor identification, collecting product data from 21 currently active English dark web marketplaces and using a multi-dimensional feature extraction method based on product titles, descriptions, and images. Using pseudo-labeling technology combined with manual labeling improves data labeling accuracy compared to previous labeling methods. The proposed method uses a Siamese neural network with metric learning to learn the similarity between vendors and achieve the recognition of vendors’ multiple identities. This method achieved better performance with an average F1-score of 0.889 and an accuracy rate of 97.535% on the constructed dataset. The contributions of this paper lie in the proposed method for collecting and labeling data for dark web marketplaces and overcoming the limitations of traditional multiclass classifiers to achieve effective recognition of vendors’ multiple identities.


A customized ConvNeXt‐XL network with fusion of deep and handcrafted features for colposcopy image classification

Abstract: Abstract Cervical cancer is the second most frequent cancer among women of all age groups worldwide. It occurs due to human papillomavirus. In the premature stages, the symptoms will not be predominant until they reach the final stage of cancer. Detection and classification of cervical cancer always demand gynecologists with the necessary skills and experience. The goal of the proposed work is to develop a deep learning framework to facilitate the automated classification of cervical cancer using colposcopy images. The following Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) models are proposed to detect cervical cancer and classify cervix‐type images. (i) the pre‐trained DCNNs, namely VGG16, ResNet50, InceptionV3, InceptionResNetV2, and ConvNeXtXLarge (ConvNeXt‐XL) using Softmax classifier based on deep features; (ii) the ConvNeXt‐XL model with classification using Support Vector Machine (SVM), K Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and Decision Tree (DT) based on deep features; (iii) a customized ConvNeXt‐XL network to enhance the classification accuracy using serially concatenated handcrafted and deep features. The research experiment was carried out separately using two datasets: the Cervix‐Type dataset (Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3) and the Real Time Cervical dataset (Normal and Abnormal). The simulation outcome confirms that the customized ConvNeXt‐XL helped to improve the classification accuracy with the Cervix‐Type dataset (>97%) and Real Time Cervical dataset (>98%).


Paguroidea: Fused Parser Generator with Transparent Semantic Actions

Abstract: Parser generators have long been a savior for programmers, liberating them from the daunting task of crafting correct and maintainable parsers. Yet, this much-needed simplicity often comes at the expense of efficiency.


From Low-Level Fault Modeling (of a Pipeline Attack) to a Proven Hardening Scheme

Abstract: Fault attacks present unique safety and security challenges that require dedicated countermeasures, even for bug-free programs. Models of these complex attacks are made workable by approximating their effects to a suitable level of abstraction. The common practice of targeting the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) level isn't ideal because it discards important micro-architectural information, leading to weaker security guarantees. Conversely, including micro-architectural details makes countermeasures harder to model and reason about, creating a new challenge in validating and trusting protections.


Microexpression Recognition Model based on Non Negative Matrix Decomposition in Intelligent Classroom

Abstract: At present, intelligent systems with the function of automatic micro expression recognition are gradually applied in intelligent classrooms, but there is still a problem of low recognition rate. Therefore, based on the dual graph regularization, the research constructs a joint non negative matrix decomposition algorithm model for micro expression recognition, and verifies its effectiveness. The experimental results showed that the research algorithm had the highest performance in both micro and macro expression (micro) databases, at 75.4%. In algorithm comparison, the recognition rates of algorithm L and algorithm M in different databases were higher than those of group A and B algorithms. Among them, Algorithm 6 in Group A had the highest recognition rate in all three databases, with the highest being 57.4%; Algorithm 12 in Group B had the highest recognition rate in Zhongke Microexpression 2 and micro and macro expression databases, with 61.1% and 59.4%; Algorithm 11 had the highest recognition rate in self generated micro expression databases, with 54.0%. And algorithm L and algorithm M had a minimum of 58.5% and a maximum of 75.4%. In parameter sensitivity analysis, the recognition rates of parameters η, χ, and γ in all databases showed good recognition results within a certain range of values, but they would decrease when they exceeded a specific value. Overall, the algorithm model proposed in the study has high effectiveness in improving the recognition rate of micro expressions, which is significant for the micro expression recognition of students in practical intelligent classrooms.


Realities Otherwise

Abstract: Chapter 2 suggests that the experience of being in LA unlocks some of VR’s more ineffable qualities. The architectural façades of the movie set and theme park extend throughout the city, offering a glimpse of other places and other times while moving through the urban landscape. Building on theorists who analyze LA as a postmodern city and ground zero for hyperreality, this chapter proposes the unreal as a way for thinking about contemporary shifts in reality that the city makes legible and VR exemplifies. That one seems to be able to feel reality becoming something else in LA hones an intuition for the kinds of worlds and realities that VR similarly invites into being.


Security analysis of agricultural energy internet considering electricity load control for dragon fruit cultivation

Abstract: With the increasing emphasis on sustainable energy and the advancements in modern agriculture, flexible agricultural power loads present challenges to the reliable operation of the agricultural energy internet. However, research on the coupling of energy system security with agricultural security is insufficient and fails to consider the impacts of meteorological elements on agricultural power loads. To address these gaps, this paper establishes load models for irrigation and light supplementation based on the actual cultivation demands of winter dragon fruit in Guangxi province. A static security index system is developed to analyze the security, considering the unique features of agricultural power demands. The condition of the distribution network is assessed by comparing the indexes with predefined limits, using a China 41-bus distribution network. Finally, the optimal scheme for nocturnal supplemental lighting treatment and irrigation is determined based on the method for maintaining secure operation of the distribution network. This study serves as a guide for simulating current farming power loads and demonstrates how security analysis of the agricultural energy internet contributes to the large-scale and sophisticated development of modern agriculture.


Evaluating the Security of CAPTCHAs utilized on Bangladeshi Websites

Abstract: A number of attacks such as spamming, email-address harvesting, dictionary attacks, brute-force attacks, credential surfing attacks, DOS attacks and others can be executed relatively easily if the target system cannot differentiate between requests coming from a real human user and those generated artificially by bots. In order to distinguish between human users and bots, the Completely Automatic Public Turing Test (CAPTCHA) has been used for almost 20 years. Nevertheless, CAPTCHA can be easily broken if it lacks security features. Consequently, the motivation for utilizing CAPTCHA is undermined. This article proposes a framework that can evaluate the security aspects of text CAPTCHAs. The effectiveness of the framework is validated by using a generalized attack method consisting of pre-processing and utilizing an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) library such as Tesseract OCR. We have carried out a systematic study of existing CAPTCHAs utilized on Bangladeshi websites. We have studied 238 Bangladeshi websites and found that only 44 websites used a CAPTCHA mechanism. Then, we have assessed the security levels of the selected text CAPTCHAs by the proposed framework. As per our analysis, we have found that there are 29 different CAPTCHA schemes being adopted on Bangladeshi websites and among them 23 are vulnerable to automated attacks. In order to address these issues, we also present a number of recommendations.


MECOS: A Bilingual Manipuri-English Spontaneous Code-Switching Speech Corpus for Automatic Speech Recognition

Abstract: In this study, we introduce a new code-switched speech database with 57 hours of Manipuri-English annotated spontaneous speech. Manipuri is an official language of India and is primarily spoken in the north-eastern Indian state of Manipur. Most Manipur native speakers today are bilingual and frequently use code switching in everyday discussions. By carefully assessing the amount of code-switched speech in each video, recordings from YouTube are gathered. 21339 utterances and 291731 instances of code switching are present in the database. Given the code-switching nature of the data, a proper annotation procedure is used, and the data are manually annotated using the Meitei Mayek unicode font and the roman alphabets for Manipuri and English, respectively. The transcription includes the names of the speakers, non-speech information, and the corresponding annotation. The aim of this research is to construct an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system as well as offer a thorough analysis and details of the speech corpus. We believe that our research is the first to use an ASR system for Manipuri-English code-switched speech. To evaluate the performance, ASR systems based on hybrid deep neural network and hidden markov model (DNN-HMM), time delay neural network (TDNN), hybrid time delay neural network and long short-term memory (TDNN-LSTM) and three end-to-end (E2E) models i.e. hybrid connectionist temporal classification and attention model (CTC-Attention), Conformer, wav2vec XLSR are developed for Manipuri-English language. In comparison to other models, pure TDNN produces outcomes that are clearly superior.


Adversarial patch-based false positive creation attacks against aerial imagery object detectors

Abstract: Although adversarial attacks have revealed weaknesses in Deep Neural Networks (DNNs)-based aerial detectors, they present a new paradigm for concealing vulnerable assets from autonomous detection systems onboard satellites. Among them, adversarial patches were widely applied due to their physical realizability. Nonetheless, most existing adversarial patch-based attack methods are developed to hide objects from detectors to achieve a vanishing attack. This paper proposes a novel Adversarial Patch False Positive Creation Attack (APFP-CA) framework that enables aerial detectors to recognize non-existent objects, thereby realizing a creation attack. Concretely, the APFP-CA models the creation attack as a two-stage optimization problem. The first stage uses a well-designed efficient loss function to increase the objectness score of patches placed anywhere in the scene to achieve untargeted attacks. The second stage involves elaborating two category-dependent loss functions for fulfilling targeted attacks. Experiments conducted on diverse datasets and detectors demonstrate the effectiveness and universality of our method. Transfer attacks across different datasets and models validate the generalizability of the optimized adversarial patches. Finally, we perform several proportionally scaled experiments physically to illustrate that the optimized adversarial patches can successfully deceive aerial detectors in the physical world. The proposed approach offers a novel contribution to adversarial attacks against aerial imagery objectors and holds potential for practical applications in high-security systems.


Abstract: Link prediction in open knowledge graphs (OpenKGs) is crucial for applications like question answering and recommendation systems. Existing OpenKG models leverage the semantic information of noun phrases (NPs) to enhance the performance in the link prediction task. However, these models only extract superficial semantic information from NPs, ignoring the fact that an NP possesses diverse semantics. Furthermore, these models have not fully exploited the semantic information of the relation phrases (RPs). To address these issues, we propose a model for link prediction called Open Knowledge Graph Link Prediction with Semantic-Aware Embedding (SeAE). First, we develop an adaptive disentanglement embedding (ADE) mechanism to learn the intrinsically abundant semantics of NPs. The ADE mechanism can adaptively calculate the embedding segmentation number according to the dataset and has an ingenious method for updating embeddings. Second, we integrate the attention mechanism into the GRU encoder to obtain the distribution of importance inside RP, facilitating a more comprehensive capture of the RP’s semantic information and enhancing the model’s interpretability. Finally, we design a relation gate, which extracts the RP semantic features of tail NP from the shared edge. This gate realizes the relation constraints on entities while enhancing the interaction between entities and relations. Extensive experiments on four benchmarks demonstrate that SeAE outperforms the state-of-the-art models, resulting in improvements of approximately 5.4% and 7.4% in MRR on ReVerb45K and ReVerb45KF datasets respectively.


FCPFNet: Feature Complementation Network with Pyramid Fusion for Semantic Segmentation

Abstract: Abstract Traditional pyramid pooling modules have shown effective improvements in semantic segmentation tasks by capturing multi-scale feature information. However, their limitations arise from the shallow structure, which fails to fully extract contextual information, and the fused multi-scale feature information lacks distinctiveness, resulting in issues with the final segmentation discriminability. To address these issues, we proposes an effective solution called FCPFNet, which is based on global contextual prior for deep feature extraction of detailed information. Specifically, we introduce a novel deep feature aggregation module to extract semantic information from the output feature map of each layer through a deep aggregation of context information module, and expands the effective perception range. Additionally, we propose an Efficient Pyramid Pooling Module (EPPM) to capture distinctive features through communicating information between different sub-features and performs multi-scale fusion, which is integrated as a branch within the network to complement the information loss resulting from downsampling operations. Furthermore, in order to ensure the richness of image detail feature information and maintain a large receptive field to obtain more contextual information, EPPM concatenates the input feature map and the output feature map of the pyramid pooling module to acquire more comprehensive global contextual information. It has been demonstrated by experiment that the method described in this article achieves competitive performance on the challenging scene segmentation datasets Pascal VOC 2012, Cityscapes and Coco-Stuff, with MIOU of 81.0%, 78.8% and 40.1%, respectively.


POSTER: ParGNN: Efficient Training for Large-Scale Graph Neural Network on GPU Clusters

Abstract: Full-batch graph neural network (GNN) training is essential for interdisciplinary applications. Large-scale graph data is usually divided into subgraphs and distributed across multiple compute units to train GNN. The state-of-the-art load balancing method based on direct graph partition is too rough to effectively achieve true load balancing on GPU clusters. We propose ParGNN, which employs a profiler-guided load balance workflow in conjunction with graph repartition to alleviate load imbalance and minimize communication traffic. Experiments have verified that ParGNN has the capability to scale to larger clusters.


INFINEL: An efficient GPU-based processing method for unpredictable large output graph queries

Abstract: With the introduction of GPUs, which are specialized for iterative parallel computations, the execution of computation-intensive graph queries using a GPU has seen significant performance improvements. However, due to the memory constraints of GPUs, there has been limited research on handling large-scale output graph queries with unpredictable output sizes on a GPU. Traditionally, two-phase methods have been used, where the query is re-executed after splitting it into sub-tasks while only considering the size of the output in a static manner. However, two-phase methods become highly inefficient when used with graph data with extreme skew, failing to maximize the GPU performance. This paper proposes INFINEL, which handles unpredictable large output graph queries in a one-phase method through chunk allocation per thread and kernel stop/restart methods. We also propose applicable optimization techniques due to the corresponding unique characteristics of operating with low time/space overhead and not heavily relying on the GPU output buffer size. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that our one-phase method of INFINEL improves the performance by up to 31.5 times over the conventional two-phase methods for triangle listing ULO query.


POSTER: FineCo: Fine-grained Heterogeneous Resource Management for Concurrent DNN Inferences

Abstract: Co-locating multiple DNN servings to share GPU resource is widely used to improve resource utilization while guaranteeing user QoS. Existing GPU sharing mechanism is restricted to model level, and fluctuations in kernel-level resource demands highlight a suboptimal utilization of the current sharing mechanism. We design a multi-DNN serving system, FineCo, that leverages a novel fine-grained resource sharing mechanism to optimize concurrent inference without modifications to the hardware or operating system. Our prototype implementation demonstrates that FineCo achieves up to 40% throughput improvement over the state-of-the-art work.


Low-Dose CT Image Super-resolution Network with Noise Inhibition Based on Feedback Feature Distillation Mechanism

Abstract: Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) has been widely used in medical diagnosis. In practice, doctors often zoom in on LDCT slices for clearer lesions and issues, while, a simple zooming operation fails to suppress low-dose artifacts, leading to distorted details. Therefore, numerous LDCT super-resolution (SR) methods have been proposed to promote the quality of zooming without the increase of the dose in CT scanning. However, there are still some drawbacks that need to be addressed in existing methods. First, the region of interest (ROI) is not emphasized due to the lack of guidance in the reconstruction process. Second, the convolutional blocks extracting fix-resolution features fail to concentrate on the essential multi-scale features. Third, a single SR head cannot suppress the residual artifacts. To address these issues, we propose an LDCT CT joint SR and denoising reconstruction network. Our proposed network consists of global dual-guidance attention fusion modules (GDAFMs) and multi-scale anastomosis blocks (MABs). The GDAFM directs the network to focus on ROI by fusing the extra mask guidance and average CT image guidance, while the MAB introduces hierarchical features through anastomosis connections to leverage multi-scale features and promote the feature representation ability. To suppress radial residual artifacts, we optimize our network using the feedback feature distillation mechanism (FFDM) which shares the backbone to learn features corresponding to the denoising task. We apply the proposed method to the 3D-IRCADB and PANCREAS datasets to evaluate its ability on LDCT image SR reconstruction. The experimental results compared with state-of-the-art methods illustrate the superiority of our approach with respect to peak signal-to-noise (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM), and qualitative observations. Our proposed LDCT joint SR and denoising reconstruction network has been extensively evaluated through ablation, quantitative, and qualitative experiments. The results demonstrate that our method can recover noise-free and detail-sharp images, resulting in better reconstruction results. Code is available at https://github.com/neu-szy/ldct_sr_dn_w_ffdm .


Stronger Heterogeneous Feature Learning for Visible-Infrared Person Re-Identification

Abstract: Abstract Visible-Infrared person re-identification (VI-ReID) is of great importance in the field of intelligent surveillance. It enables re-identification of pedestrians between daytime and dark scenarios, which can help police find escaped criminals at night. Currently, existing methods suffer from inadequate utilisation of cross-modality information, missing modality-specific discriminative information and weaknesses in perceiving differences between different modalities. To solve the above problems, we innovatively propose a stronger heterogeneous feature learning (SHFL) method for VI-ReID. First, we innovatively propose a Cross-Modality Group-wise constraint to solve the problem of inadequate utilization of cross-modality information. Secondly, we innovatively propose a Second-Order Homogeneous Invariant Regularizer to address the problem that missing modality-specific discriminative information. Finally, we innovatively propose a Modality-Aware Batch Normalization to address the problem of weaknesses in perceiving differences between different modalities. Extensive experimental results on two generic VI-ReID datasets demonstrate that the proposed final method outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms.


A comparative study of LSTM-ED architectures in forecasting day-ahead solar photovoltaic energy using Weather Data

Abstract: Abstract Solar photovoltaic (PV) energy, with its clean, local, and renewable features, is an effective complement to traditional energy sources today. However, the photovoltaic power system is highly weather-dependent and therefore has unstable and intermittent characteristics. Despite the negative impact of these features on solar sources, the increase in worldwide installed PV capacity has made solar energy prediction an important research topic. This study compares three encoder-decoder (ED) networks for day-ahead solar PV energy prediction: Long Short-Term Memory ED (LSTM-ED), Convolutional LSTM ED (Conv-LSTM-ED), and Convolutional Neural Network and LSTM ED (CNN-LSTM-ED). The models are tested using 1741-day-long datasets from 26 PV panels in Istanbul, Turkey, considering both power and energy output of the panels and meteorological features. The results show that the Conv-LSTM-ED with 50 iterations is the most successful model, achieving an average prediction score of up to 0.88 over R-square (R 2 ). Evaluation of the iteration counts’ effect reveals that the Conv-LSTM-ED with 50 iterations also yields the lowest Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) values, confirming its success. In addition, the fitness and effectiveness of the models are evaluated, with the Conv-LSTM-ED achieving the lowest Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) values for each iteration. The findings of this work can help researchers build the best data-driven methods for forecasting PV solar energy based on PV features and meteorological features.


Gallatin: A General-Purpose GPU Memory Manager

Abstract: Dynamic memory management is critical for efficiently porting modern data processing pipelines to GPUs. However, building a general-purpose dynamic memory manager on GPUs is challenging due to the massive parallelism and weak memory coherence. Existing state-of-the-art GPU memory managers, Ouroboros and Reg-Eff, employ traditional data structures such as arrays and linked lists to manage memory objects. They build specialized pipelines to achieve performance for a fixed set of allocation sizes and fall back to the CUDA allocator for allocating large sizes. In the process, they lose general-purpose usability and fail to support critical applications such as streaming graph processing.


POSTER: Pattern-Aware Sparse Communication for Scalable Recommendation Model Training

Abstract: Recommendation models are an important category of deep learning models whose size is growing enormous. They consist of a sparse part with TBs of memory footprint and a dense part that demands PFLOPs of computing capability to train. Unfortunately, the high sparse communication cost to re-organize data for different parallel strategies of the two parts impedes the scalability in training.


FastFold: Optimizing AlphaFold Training and Inference on GPU Clusters

Abstract: Protein structure prediction helps to understand gene translation and protein function, which is of growing interest and importance in structural biology. The AlphaFold model, which used transformer architecture to achieve atomic-level accuracy in protein structure prediction, was a significant breakthrough. However, training and inference of AlphaFold model are challenging due to its high computation and memory cost. In this work, we present FastFold, an efficient implementation of AlphaFold for both training and inference. We propose Dynamic Axial Parallelism (DAP) as a novel model parallelism method. Additionally, we have implemented a series of low-level optimizations aimed at reducing communication, computation, and memory costs. These optimizations include Duality Async Operations, highly optimized kernels, and AutoChunk (an automated search algorithm finds the best chunk strategy to reduce memory peaks). Experimental results show that FastFold can efficiently scale to more GPUs using DAP and reduces overall training time from 11 days to 67 hours and achieves 7.5 ~ 9.5× speedup for long-sequence inference. Furthermore, AutoChunk can reduce memory cost by over 80% during inference by automatically partitioning the intermediate tensors during the computation.


Semantic-driven dimension reduction for wireless internet of things

Abstract: In recent years, mobile communication and artificial intelligence technologies have been widely used in the construction of wireless networks, bringing about a dramatic increase in data size. Existing wireless networks usually consist of a large number of nodes, with the potential risk of the curse of dimensionality. High dimensionality plays a negative role in learning effectiveness and efficiency, which should have been studied in depth but is neglected in existing wireless network research. In order to generate effective semantic-driven efficiency, this paper focuses on semantic-driven dimensionality reduction for wireless Internet of Things. Specifically, this paper introduces a series of feature selection techniques centered on Mahalanobis distance for dimensionality reduction, which helps to select discriminative features by measuring the effectiveness of semantic preferences and semantic-driven efficiency through Mahalanobis distance. Experiments on a set of wireless sensor data and various high-dimensional microarray data validate the superior performance of the proposed method.


Event-based data authenticity analytics for IoT and blockchain-enabled ESG disclosure

Abstract: Environment, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure has raised significant interest in academia and industry for sustainable development and investing. However, the data authenticity of the ESG disclosure is still a serious matter of concern. This study proposes a novel solution to solve the above problem. First, an ESG information disclosure system (IBESG) enabled by IoT and blockchain is originally designed. The IBESG integrates IoT and blockchain technologies to facilitate the collection and transmission of data during ESG disclosure, and to ensures the data authenticity, consistency, and transparency. Second, the authors design a Local and Global Authenticity Verification Flow (LGA) consisting of edge computing and cloud computing to sufficiently verify the authenticity through the data flow. In addition, data authenticity analytics algorithms are developed in this study, which contains event-based spatial–temporal analytics and authenticity index computation. Finally, an experimental simulation is carried out to illustrate the implementation of the IBESG and the performance of the verification solution, and the sensitivity analysis of the above solution is conducted. Moreover, the relevant suggestions on deployment are given according to the findings during the experiment, and future work on improving the algorithm and conducting experiments in field manufacturing factories is illustrated. This study is expected to help academia and industry apply the solution in similar scenarios and inspire new ideas.


GPT classifications, with application to credit lending

Abstract: Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT) and Large language models (LLMs) have made significant advancements in natural language processing in recent years. The practical applications of LLMs are undeniable, rendering moot any debate about their impending influence. The power of LLMs has made them similar to machine learning models for decision-making problems. In this paper, we focus on binary classification which is a common use of ML models, particularly in credit lending applications. We show how a GPT model can perform almost as accurately as a classical logistic machine learning model but with a much lower number of sample observations. In particular, we show how, in the context of credit lending, LLMs can be improved and reach performances similar to classical logistic regression models using only a small set of examples.


Ontology-Based Data Observatory for Formal Knowledge Representation of UXO Using Advanced Semantic Web Technologies

Abstract: As landmines and other unexploded ordnances (UXOs) present a great risk to civilians and infrastructure, humanitarian demining is an essential component of any post-conflict reconstruction. This paper introduces the Minefield Observatory, a novel web-based datastore service that semantically integrates diverse data in humanitarian demining to comprehensively and formally describe suspected minefields. Because of the high heterogeneity and isolation of the available minefield datasets, extracting relevant information to determine the optimal course of demining efforts is time-consuming, labor-intensive and requires highly specialized knowledge. Data consolidation and artificial intelligence techniques are used to convert unstructured data sources and store them in an ontology-based knowledge database that can be efficiently accessed through a Semantic Web application serving as the Minefield Observatory user interface. The MINEONT+ ontology was developed to integrate diverse mine scene information obtained through non-technical surveys and remote sensing, such as aerial and hyperspectral satellite imagery, indicators of mine presence and absence, contextual data, terrain analysis information, and battlefield reports. The Minefield Observatory uses the Microdata API to embed this dataset into dynamic HTML5 content, allowing seamless usage in a user-centric web tool. A use-case example was provided demonstrating the viability of the proposed approach.


Cognitive Enhancement of Robot Path Planning and Environmental Perception Based on Gmapping Algorithm Optimization

Abstract: In the logistics warehouse environment, the autonomous navigation and environment perception of the logistics sorting robot are two key challenges. To deal with the complex obstacles and cargo layout in a warehouse, this study focuses on improving the robot perception and navigation system to achieve efficient path planning and safe motion control. For this purpose, a scheme based on an improved Gmapping algorithm is proposed to construct a high-precision map inside a warehouse through the efficient scanning and processing of environmental data by robots. While the improved algorithm effectively integrates sensor data with robot position information to realize the real-time modeling and analysis of warehouse environments. Consequently, the precise mapping results provide a reliable navigation basis for the robot, enabling it to make intelligent path planning and obstacle avoidance decisions in unknown or dynamic environments. The experimental results show that the robot using the improved Gmapping algorithm has high accuracy and robustness in identifying obstacles and an effectively reduced navigation error, thus improving the intelligence level and efficiency of logistics operations. The improved algorithm significantly enhances obstacle detection rates, increasing them by 4.05%. Simultaneously, it successfully reduces map size accuracy errors by 1.4% and angle accuracy errors by 0.5%. Additionally, the accuracy of the robot’s travel distance improves by 2.4%, and the mapping time is reduced by nine seconds. Significant progress has been made in achieving high-precision environmental perception and intelligent navigation, providing reliable technical support and solutions for autonomous operations in logistics warehouses.


Solvent Distribution Effects on Quantum Chemical Calculations with Quantum Computers

Abstract: We present a combination of three-dimensional reference interaction site model self-consistent field (3D-RISM-SCF) theory and the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) to consider the solvent distribution effects within the framework of quantum-classical hybrid computing.The present method, 3D-RISM-VQE, does not include any statistical errors from the solvent configuration sampling owing to the analytical treatment of the statistical solvent distribution.We apply 3D-RISM-VQE to compute the spatial distribution functions of solvent water around a water molecule, the potential and Helmholtz energy curves of NaCl, and to conduct Helmholtz energy component analysis of H2O and NH + 4 .Moreover, we utilize 3D-RISM-VQE to analyze the extent to which solvent effects alter the efficiency of quantum calculations compared with calculations in the gas phase using the L 1norms of molecular electronic Hamiltonians.Our results demonstrate that the efficiency of quantum chemical calculations on a quantum computer in solution is virtually the same as in the gas phase.I.


Fashion intelligence in the Metaverse: promise and future prospects

Abstract: Abstract With the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and the constraints on offline activities imposed due to the sudden outbreak of the COVID epidemic, the Metaverse has recently attracted significant research attention from both academia and industrial practitioners. Fashion, as an expression of a consumer’s aesthetics and personality, has enormous economic potential in both the real world and the Metaverse. In this research, we provide a comprehensive survey of two of the most important components of fashion in the Metaverse: virtual digital humans, and tasks related to fashion items. We survey state-of-the-art articles from 2007 to the present and provide a new taxonomy of extant research topics based on these articles. We also highlight the applications of these topics in the Metaverse from the perspectives of designers and consumers. Finally, we describe possible scenes involving fashion in the Metaverse. The current challenges and open issues related to the fashion industry in the Metaverse are also discussed in order to provide guidance for fashion practitioners, and to shed some light on the future development of fashion AI in the Metaverse.


Evaluating Design Guidelines for Intuitive, Therefore Sustainable, Virtual Reality Authoring Tools

Abstract: Virtual reality software might be challenging to utilize for beginners and unskilled professionals who do not have a programming or 3D modeling background. Concurrently, there is a knowledge gap in software project design for intuitive virtual reality authoring tools, which were supposed to be easier to use. These tools are frequently insufficient due to a lack of support and standard operating procedures. This study evaluates the validity of fourteen design guidelines for the development of intuitive virtual reality authoring tools. Adopting the Design Science Research approach, a previous study completed the first steps of the protocol by identifying problems, defining solution objectives, and developing and demonstrating the design guidelines. This work evaluates their application in a experiment. A group of engineering students with no prior experience in creating virtual worlds were tasked with examining the design guidelines while using the NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise as an exemplary use case by following the tutorials in the platform. Previously, the students answered a Likert-scale questionnaire and a focus group interview, with eighteen questions about how they perceived these guidelines. An average score value for the tool was estimated through the questionnaire answers and a correlation analysis and, using the Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC), it was confirmed that most guidelines scores behaved as expected and were ranked according to the use-case functionality. The participants understood the guidelines’ definition and could decide if they agreed or disagreed with their presence during the experiment. We evaluated that, in accordance with the Design Science Research, the proposed artifact is useful, i.e., the design guidelines for virtual reality authoring tools perform what they are designed to do and are operationally reliable in accomplishing their goals.


Design and development of prime herder optimization based BiLSTM congestion predictor model in live video streaming

Abstract: High-quality content for the user in video streaming services depends critically on the ability to predict the continuous user’s quality of experience (QoE). However, continuous QoE prediction has proven challenging due to the complexity imposed by the temporal dependencies in QoE data and the non-linear correlations among QoE impact elements. In this research congestion prediction model is developed using the prime herder optimization-based BiLSTM (PHO-based BiLSTM). The input database is first gathered from the NIMS and darpa99 week 1 database and, the data collection is analyzed and the packet information is extracted after that the extracted features are then fed into the optimized BiLSTM classifier to train the classifier. The classifier’s hyperparameters are successfully tuned by the recommended prime herder optimization, which is made by fusing the herding characteristics of a prime sheepdog and herder optimization. Based on the traffic congestion prediction achievements, at training percentage (TP) 90, the accuracy is 94.81%, specificity is 94.90%, and mean square error (MSE) is 4.91 respectively for D1, similarly based on D2 the accuracy is 95.62%, specificity is 95.96%, and MSE is 0.38 respectively.


Sound field reconstruction using neural processes with dynamic kernels

Abstract: Abstract Accurately representing the sound field with high spatial resolution is crucial for immersive and interactive sound field reproduction technology. In recent studies, there has been a notable emphasis on efficiently estimating sound fields from a limited number of discrete observations. In particular, kernel-based methods using Gaussian processes (GPs) with a covariance function to model spatial correlations have been proposed. However, the current methods rely on pre-defined kernels for modeling, requiring the manual identification of optimal kernels and their parameters for different sound fields. In this work, we propose a novel approach that parameterizes GPs using a deep neural network based on neural processes (NPs) to reconstruct the magnitude of the sound field. This method has the advantage of dynamically learning kernels from data using an attention mechanism, allowing for greater flexibility and adaptability to the acoustic properties of the sound field. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our proposed approach outperforms current methods in reconstructing accuracy, providing a promising alternative for sound field reconstruction.


Better-than-classical Grover search via quantum error detection and suppression

Abstract: Abstract We report better-than-classical success probabilities for a complete Grover quantum search algorithm on the largest scale demonstrated to date, of up to five qubits, using two different IBM platforms. This is enabled by error suppression via robust dynamical decoupling. Further improvements arise after the use of measurement error mitigation, but the latter is insufficient by itself for achieving better-than-classical performance. For two qubits, we demonstrate a 99.5% success probability via the use of the [[4, 2, 2]] quantum error-detection (QED) code. This constitutes a demonstration of quantum algorithmic breakeven via QED. Along the way, we introduce algorithmic error tomography (AET), a method that provides a holistic view of the errors accumulated throughout an entire quantum algorithm, filtered via the errors detected by the QED code used to encode the circuit. We demonstrate that AET provides a stringent test of an error model based on a combination of amplitude damping, dephasing, and depolarization.


Stationary Points of a Shallow Neural Network with Quadratic Activations and the Global Optimality of the Gradient Descent Algorithm

Abstract: We consider the problem of training a shallow neural network with quadratic activation functions and the generalization power of such trained networks. Assuming that the samples are generated by a full rank matrix [Formula: see text] of the hidden network node weights, we obtain the following results. We establish that all full-rank approximately stationary solutions of the risk minimization problem are also approximate global optimums of the risk (in-sample and population). As a consequence, we establish that, when trained on polynomially many samples, the gradient descent algorithm converges to the global optimum of the risk minimization problem regardless of the width of the network when it is initialized at some value [Formula: see text], which we compute. Furthermore, the network produced by the gradient descent has a near zero generalization error. Next, we establish that initializing the gradient descent algorithm below [Formula: see text] is easily achieved when the weights of the ground truth matrix [Formula: see text] are randomly generated and the matrix is sufficiently overparameterized. Finally, we identify a simple necessary and sufficient geometric condition on the size of the training set under which any global minimizer of the empirical risk has necessarily zero generalization error. Funding: The research of E. C. Kizildag is supported by Columbia University, with the Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship in Statistics. Support from the National Science Foundation [Grant DMS-2015517] is gratefully acknowledged.


Effective preprocessing and feature analysis on Twitter data for Fake news detection using RWS algorithm

Abstract:
The tremendous headway of web empowered gadgets develops the clients dependably strong in virtual redirection affiliations. Individuals from social affairs getting moment notices with respect to news, amusement, training, business, and different themes. The development of artificial intelligence-based classification models plays an optimum role in making deeper analysis of text data. The massive growth of text-based communication impacts the social decisions also. People rely on news and updates coming over in social media and networking groups. Micro blogs such as tweeter, facebooks manipulate the news as faster as possible.
 The quality of classification of fake news and real news depends on the processing steps. The proposed articles focused on deriving a significant method for pre-processing the dataset and feature extraction of the unique data. Dataset is considered as the input data for analyzing the presence of fake news. The extraction of unique features from the data is implemented using Bags of relevant tags (BORT) extraction and Bags of relevant meta words (BORMW).


A Novel Federated Learning Framework Based on Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks for Privacy Preserving in 6G

Abstract: With the rapid development of 6G networks, data transmission speed has significantly increased, making data privacy protection issues even more crucial. The federated learning (FL) is a distributed machine learning framework with privacy protection and secure encryption technology, aimed at enabling dispersed participants to collaborate on model training without disclosing private data to other participants. Nonetheless, recent research indicates that the exchange of shared gradients may lead to information disclosure, and thus FL still needs to address privacy concerns. Additionally, FL relies on a large number of diverse training data to forge efficient models, but in reality, the training data available to clients are limited, and data imbalance issues lead to over fitting in existing federated learning models. To alleviate these issues, we introduce a Novel Federated Learning Framework based on Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (NFL-CGAN). NFL-CGAN divides the local networks of each client into private and public modules. The private module contains an extractor and a discriminator to protect privacy by retaining them locally. Conversely, the public module is shared with the server to aggregate the shared knowledge of clients, thereby improving the performance of each client local network. Comprehensive experimental analyses demonstrate that NFL-CGAN surpasses traditional FL baseline methods in data classification, showcasing its superior efficacy. Moreover, privacy assessments also verified robust and reliable privacy protection capabilities of NFL-CGAN.


Complexity for one-dimensional discrete-time quantum walk circuits

Abstract: We compute the complexity for the mixed-state density operator derived from a one-dimensional discrete-time quantum walk (DTQW). The complexity is computed using a two-qubit quantum circuit obtained from canonically purifying the mixed state. We demonstrate that the Nielson complexity for the unitary evolution oscillates around a mean circuit depth of $k$. Further, the complexity of the stepwise evolution operator grows cumulatively and linearly with the steps. From a quantum circuit perspective, this implies a succession of circuits of (near) constant depth to be applied to reach the final state.


Microsoft Teams Utilization for Group Function in Maritime-Focused Mechanical Design Capstone

Abstract: Evaluating the ability of students to do group work or function effectively on a team has always been a challenge.This was especially true with the transition to online learning that occurred during the pandemic in early 2020.This challenged not only the ability of the students to complete their group assignments, but also the ability of the instructors to perform ABET assessments on the ability of students to function on a team.To mitigate these issues, Microsoft Teams was implemented as a collaboration platform and a tool for additional assessments.This paper details the implementation strategy in a capstone design course and the results from Fall 2020.Results demonstrate that significant benefits can be generated in both group functionality and group interactions by incorporating Microsoft Teams.


Research on Automatic Scoring Method of Intelligent Translation System Based on TSO Optimized LSTM Networks

Abstract: INTRODCTION: The study of automatic marking methods in the Department of Language Translation is conducive to the fairness and rationality of marking by examining the comprehensive level of the students' language, as well as sharing the objectivity and pressure of the marking teachers in marking the scripts.OBJECTIVES: Aiming at the current automatic scoring methods of translation systems, which have the problems of not considering the global nature of influence features and low precision.METHODS: This paper proposes an automatic scoring method for translation system based on intelligent optimization algorithm to improve the deep network. First, by analyzing the language translation scoring problem, selecting the key scoring influencing factors and analyzing the correlation and principal components; then, improving the long and short-term memory network through the triangle search optimization algorithm and constructing the automatic scoring model of the translation system; finally, the high efficiency of the proposed method is verified through the analysis of simulation experiments.RESULTS: The proposed method is effective and improves the accuracy of the scoring model.CONCLUSION: solves the problem of inefficient scoring in the automatic scoring method of the translation system.


Neural Networks Verification: Perspectives from Formal Method

Abstract: Neural Networks find applications across diverse domains in Computer Science. Despite their versatility, Neural Networks often demonstrate performance inconsistencies, necessitating the evaluation of their robustness, reliability, and correctness. Traditional Formal Verification techniques, proven effective in other contexts, face challenges when applied to Neural Networks. In this work, we explore the limitations of Formal Verification methods in the context of Neural Networks and further aim to propose a principled method to improve their verification.


Data-Driven Falsification of Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are abundant in safety-critical domains such as healthcare, avionics, and autonomous vehicles. The formal verification of their operational safety is therefore of utmost importance. In this paper, we address the falsification problem where the focus is on searching for an unsafe execution in the system instead of proving their absence. The contribution of this paper is a framework that connects the falsification of the safety properties of CPS with the falsification of deep neural networks (DNNs). This connection is established by: (1) Constructing a DNN model of the CPS under test and (2) The application of various falsification tools of DNNs to falsify CPS. The proposed framework has the potential to exploit a repertoire of adversarial attack algorithms designed for the falsification of robustness properties of DNNs. Although the proposed technique is applicable to systems in general that can be executed/simulated, we demonstrate its effectiveness, particularly in CPS. We show that our framework implemented as a prototypical tool NNFal can detect hard-to-find counterexamples in CPS having linear as well as non-linear dynamics.


Enhancing MVC architecture pattern description using its System of Systems model

Abstract: When novice engineers (fresh or recent graduates with little industry experience) join a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) product company, they are tasked with comprehending the product, especially its behavior and dynamics. We believe that they can comprehend more effectively if they know and understand the architecture patterns used in the product.


Tutorial Report on Legacy Software Modernization: A Journey From Non-AI to Generative AI Approaches

Abstract: Dealing with ageing software is a reality of the industry, and even open source software systems. This is a great opportunity for the software engineering researchers to apply the traditional techniques of program analysis to solve problems of refactoring and modernization. The generative AI advancements have opened up a whole new world of possibilities for software engineering tasks such as code generation, code translation, bug fixing among others. Industry is keen on exploring scalable solutions for refactoring, automated testing and now automatic code generation.


The emergence of case matching in discontinuous DPs

Abstract: Abstract This paper explores a distinction between two phenomena that yield multiple realizations of case associated with one nominal. The first is the familiar type of nominal case concord; the second is a new phenomenon we label “case iteration.” While case concord involves the morphological realization of case on categorially distinct elements via feature sharing, case iteration arises via a separate mechanism and involves the realization of multiple instances of a functional head, which we model as D. In this sense, the case concord/case iteration distinction mirrors the agreement/clitic doubling distinction in the domain of argument-predicate matching. We argue for the existence of case iteration as a separate phenomenon primarily on the basis of novel data from Tiwa (Tibeto-Burman; India). In Tiwa, traditional case concord in continuous DPs is ruled out, but case iteration is obligatory in discontinuous DPs. We also demonstrate that this phenomenon is attested in Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) and explore related patterns crosslinguistically.


Embedded Librarians to Support Data-management Needs of a Multidisciplinary Research Program

Abstract: is the Data Services Librarian for the University of Iowa Libraries.He assists researchers with the management and sharing of research data.Brian teaches workshops and a course on data management and consults with researchers on data management plans and implementing good data practices across the data lifecycle.He curates data


The influence of training datasets on LSTM-based irradiance prediction

Abstract: Abstract In solar photovoltaic power generation, the prediction of solar irradiance is essential for minimizing energy costs and ensuring the provision of high-quality electricity. Deep learning models have recently gained popularity in the field, as numerous scholars have successfully employed them to predict solar irradiance. In line with this, this paper proposes three distinct methods for dividing the training dataset. Subsequently, these methods are employed in predicting solar irradiance using the LSTM-based model. Furthermore, an error analysis of the prediction results is conducted for each of the three models. The optimal training dataset division method is determined and proposed based on a comparison of the sizes of the three models using six error evaluation indexes.


Investigating the Correlation between Public Hospitals Managers' Accountability Pressure in Kerman City and Budgetary Slack with Focusing on the Role of Moral Intelligence and Information Asymmetry in 2022: A Descriptive Study


Multi-View Scene Classification Based on Feature Integration and Evidence Decision Fusion

Abstract: Leveraging multi-view remote sensing images in scene classification tasks significantly enhances the precision of such classifications. This approach, however, poses challenges due to the simultaneous use of multi-view images, which often leads to a misalignment between the visual content and semantic labels, thus complicating the classification process. In addition, as the number of image viewpoints increases, the quality problem for remote sensing images further limits the effectiveness of multi-view image classification. Traditional scene classification methods predominantly employ SoftMax deep learning techniques, which lack the capability to assess the quality of remote sensing images or to provide explicit explanations for the network’s predictive outcomes. To address these issues, this paper introduces a novel end-to-end multi-view decision fusion network specifically designed for remote sensing scene classification. The network integrates information from multi-view remote sensing images under the guidance of image credibility and uncertainty, and when the multi-view image fusion process encounters conflicts, it greatly alleviates the conflicts and provides more reasonable and credible predictions for the multi-view scene classification results. Initially, multi-scale features are extracted from the multi-view images using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Following this, an asymptotic adaptive feature fusion module (AAFFM) is constructed to gradually integrate these multi-scale features. An adaptive spatial fusion method is then applied to assign different spatial weights to the multi-scale feature maps, thereby significantly enhancing the model’s feature discrimination capability. Finally, an evidence decision fusion module (EDFM), utilizing evidence theory and the Dirichlet distribution, is developed. This module quantitatively assesses the uncertainty in the multi-perspective image classification process. Through the fusing of multi-perspective remote sensing image information in this module, a rational explanation for the prediction results is provided. The efficacy of the proposed method was validated through experiments conducted on the AiRound and CV-BrCT datasets. The results show that our method not only improves single-view scene classification results but also advances multi-view remote sensing scene classification results by accurately characterizing the scene and mitigating the conflicting nature of the fusion process.


Annual Daily Irradiance Analysis of Clusters in Mexico by Machine Learning Algorithms

Abstract: The assessment of solar resources involves the utilization of physical or satellite models for the determination of solar radiation on the Earth’s surface. However, a critical aspect of model validation necessitates comparisons against ground-truth measurements obtained from surface radiometers. Given the inherent challenges associated with establishing and maintaining solar radiation measurement networks—characterized by their expense, logistical complexities, limited station availability and the imperative consideration of climatic criteria for siting—countries endowed with substantial climatic diversity face difficulties in station placement. In this investigation, the measurements of annual solar irradiation, from meteorological stations of the National Weather Service in Mexico, were compared in different regions clustered by similarities in altitude, TL Linke, albedo and cloudiness index derived from satellite images; the main objective is to find the best ratio of annual solar irradiation in a set of clusters. Employing machine learning algorithms, this research endeavors to identify the most suitable model for predicting the ratio of annual solar irradiation and to determine the optimal number of clusters. The findings underscore the efficacy of the L-method as a robust technique for regionalization. Notably, the cloudiness index emerges as a pivotal feature, with the Random Forest algorithm yielding superior performance with a R2 score of 0.94, clustering Mexico into 17 regions.


Demo: On-Device Video Analysis with LLMs

Abstract: We present a new on-device pipeline that efficiently summarizes lecture videos and provides relevant answers directly from a smartphone. We utilize widely accessible tools like OCR and Vosk speech-to-text, coupled with powerful large language models (LLMs), to identify crucial sentences and generate summaries. By harnessing the capabilities of LLMs and the computational power of mobile devices, we fine-tune and quantize BERT and GPT-2 to achieve efficient lecture video summarization and question answering on consumer-grade smartphones like the Pixel 8 Pro. Notably, this approach eliminates the need for cloud APIs, ensuring enhanced user privacy and minimal mobile data usage.


Salted Inference: Enhancing Privacy while Maintaining Efficiency of Split Inference in Mobile Computing

Abstract: In split inference, a deep neural network (DNN) is partitioned to run the early part of the DNN at the edge and the later part of the DNN in the cloud. This meets two key requirements for on-device machine learning: input privacy and computation efficiency. Still, an open question in split inference is output privacy, given that the outputs of the DNN are observable in the cloud. While encrypted computing can protect output privacy too, homomorphic encryption requires substantial computation and communication resources from both edge and cloud devices.


OII: An Orientation Information Integrating Network for Oriented Object Detection in Remote Sensing Images

Abstract: Oriented object detection for remote sensing images poses formidable challenges due to arbitrary orientation, diverse scales, and densely distributed targets (e.g., across terrain). Current investigations in remote sensing object detection have primarily focused on improving the representation of oriented bounding boxes yet have neglected the significant orientation information of targets in remote sensing contexts. Recent investigations point out that the inclusion and fusion of orientation information yields substantial benefits in training an accurate oriented object system. In this paper, we propose a simple but effective orientation information integrating (OII) network comprising two main parts: the orientation information highlighting (OIH) module and orientation feature fusion (OFF) module. The OIH module extracts orientation features from those produced by the backbone by modeling the frequency information of spatial features. Given that low-frequency components in an image capture its primary content, and high-frequency components contribute to its intricate details and edges, the transformation from the spatial domain to the frequency domain can effectively emphasize the orientation information of images. Subsequently, our OFF module employs a combination of a CNN attention mechanism and self-attention to derive weights for orientation features and original features. These derived weights are adopted to adaptively enhance the original features, resulting in integrated features that contain enriched orientation information. Given the inherent limitation of the original spatial attention weights in explicitly capturing orientation nuances, the incorporation of the introduced orientation weights serves as a pivotal tool to accentuate and delineate orientation information related to targets. Without unnecessary embellishments, our OII network achieves competitive detection accuracy on two prevalent remote sensing-oriented object detection datasets: DOTA (80.82 mAP) and HRSC2016 (98.32 mAP).


Construction and Implementation of Application-Oriented Undergraduate Teaching and Teaching Evaluation System Based on Multiple Information Fusion

Abstract: At present, many schools implement teaching quality evaluation systems with student performance and practical activities as the core data of evaluation. Based on the introduction of the training objectives and discipline nature of the information management and information system specialty, this paper analyzes the construction principles of the multi-disciplinary curriculum system of the specialty and puts forward relevant countermeasures for the construction of the multi-disciplinary education system. This paper introduces the definition of practical teaching evaluation system and teaching evaluation algorithm. Among them, naive Bayesian algorithm can improve the sample accuracy by 95%, so it is necessary to build an application-oriented undergraduate practice teaching evaluation system.


Upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage patients' survival: A causal inference and prediction study

Abstract: Abstract Background Upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding is a common medical emergency. This study aimed to develop models to predict critically ill patients with upper GI bleeding in‐hospital and 30‐day survival, identify the correlation factor and infer the causality. Methods A total of 2898 patients with upper GI bleeding were included from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care‐IV and eICU‐Collaborative Research Database, respectively. To identify the most critical factors contributing to the prognostic model, we used SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) for machine learning interpretability. We performed causal inference using inverse probability weighting for survival‐associated prognostic factors. Results The optimal model using the light GBM (gradient boosting algorithm) algorithm achieved an AUC of .93 for in‐hospital survival, .81 for 30‐day survival in internal testing and .87 for in‐hospital survival in external testing. Important factors for in‐hospital survival, according to SHAP, were SOFA (Sequential organ failure assessment score), GCS (Glasgow coma scale) motor score and length of stay in ICU (Intensive critical care). In contrast, essential factors for 30‐day survival were SOFA, length of stay in ICU, total bilirubin and GCS verbal score. Our model showed improved performance compared to SOFA alone. Conclusions Our interpretable machine learning model for predicting in‐hospital and 30‐day mortality in critically ill patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding showed excellent accuracy and high generalizability. This model can assist clinicians in managing these patients to improve the discrimination of high‐risk patients.


MS-GDA: Improving Heterogeneous Recipe Representation via Multinomial Sampling Graph Data Augmentation

Abstract: We study the problem of classifying different cooking styles, based on the recipe. The difficulty is that the same food ingredients, seasoning, and the very similar instructions result in different flavors, with different cooking styles. Existing methods have limitation: they mainly focus on homogeneous data (e.g., instruction or image), ignoring heterogeneous data (e.g., flavor compound or ingredient), which certainly hurts the classification performance. This is because collecting enough available heterogeneous data of recipe is a non-trivial task. In this paper, we present a new heterogeneous data augmentation method to improve classification performance. Specifically, we first construct a heterogeneous recipe graph network to represent heterogeneous data, which includes four main-stream types of heterogeneous data: ingredient, flavor compound, image, and instruction. Then, we draw a sequence of augmented graphs for Semi-Supervised learning through multinomial sampling. The probability distribution of sampling depends on the Cosine distance between the nodes of graph. In this way, we name our approach as Multinomial Sampling Graph Data Augmentation (MS-GDA). Extensive experiments demonstrate that MS-GDA significantly outperforms SOTA baselines on cuisine classification and region prediction with the recipe benchmark dataset. Code is available at https://github.com/LiangzheChen/MS-GDA.


ProtoMGAE: Prototype-aware Masked Graph Auto-Encoder for Graph Representation Learning

Abstract: Graph self-supervised representation learning has gained considerable attention and demonstrated remarkable efficacy in extracting meaningful representations from graphs, particularly in the absence of labeled data. Two representative methods in this domain are graph auto-encoding and graph contrastive learning. However, the former methods primarily focus on global structures, potentially overlooking some fine-grained information during reconstruction. The latter methods emphasize node similarity across correlated views in the embedding space, potentially neglecting the inherent global graph information in the original input space. Moreover, handling incomplete graphs in real-world scenarios, where original features are unavailable for certain nodes, poses challenges for both types of methods. To alleviate these limitations, we integrate masked graph auto-encoding and prototype-aware graph contrastive learning into a unified model to learn node representations in graphs. In our method, we begin by masking a portion of node features and utilize a specific decoding strategy to reconstruct the masked information. This process facilitates the recovery of graphs from a global or macro level and enables handling incomplete graphs easily. Moreover, we treat the masked graph and the original one as a pair of contrasting views, enforcing the alignment and uniformity between their corresponding node representations at a local or micro level. Lastly, to capture cluster structures from a meso level and learn more discriminative representations, we introduce a prototype-aware clustering consistency loss that is jointly optimized with the above two complementary objectives. Extensive experiments conducted on several datasets demonstrate that the proposed method achieves significantly better or competitive performance on downstream tasks, especially for graph clustering, compared with the state-of-the-art methods, showcasing its superiority in enhancing graph representation learning.


CAT: Continual Adapter Tuning for aspect sentiment classification

Abstract: Humans can continually acquire, improve, and transfer knowledge throughout their lifespan so that they can accurately identify sentiment polarities of the data attributed to different domains. However, the continual learning of incrementally available aspect sentiment classification (ASC) tasks from different domains with non-stationary data distributions remains a long-standing challenge for learning-based models due to the catastrophic forgetting problem, which is the tendency to completely and abruptly forget previously learned knowledge upon learning new knowledge. In this work, we present Continual Adapter Tuning (CAT), a parameter-efficient framework that not only avoids catastrophic forgetting but also enables knowledge transfer from learned ASC tasks to new ASC tasks. To avoid catastrophic forgetting, we only learn and store a task-specific adapter for each ASC task while freezing the backbone pre-trained model. To promote new task learning, we propose a continual adapter initialization technique to transfer knowledge from preceding tasks. Besides, we also develop a novel label-aware contrastive learning to simultaneously learn the features of input samples and the parameters of classifiers in the same space so that we can efficiently classify a sample with the help of label semantics. To eliminate the need for task IDs in testing, we propose a simple yet efficient majority sentiment polarity voting strategy to obtain final sentiment polarities according to the polarities predicted by all reasoning paths in the adapter architecture. Experimental results show the high effectiveness of our CAT by achieving new state-of-the-art performance.


Implementation of the digital functional settlement at a federal public university: problems and proposed solutions

Abstract: The aim of this article is to present a proposal for improving the implementation of the Digital Functional Record in a federal public university.In pursuit of this objective, the article seeks to outline the implementation phases, the structure it will take, the professionals involved, the regulations governing the digital functional record, and the challenges faced, while also suggesting some solutions. The applied methodology is qualitative and descriptive, relying on bibliographic and documentary analysis. It is concluded that the study introduces the digital functional record in a federal public university, detailing its stages, the challenges encountered, and proposing improvements. If these proposed improvements were put into practice and became ingrained in the institution's culture, it is believed that they would bring greater benefits, preventing numerous challenges during implementation.


Reliability of Partitioning Metric Space Data

Abstract: The process of sorting or categorizing objects or information about these objects into clusters according to certain criteria is a fundamental procedure in data analysis. Where it is feasible to determine the distance metric for any pair of objects, the significance and reliability of the separation can be evaluated by calculating the separation/segregation power (SP) index proposed herein. The latter index is the ratio of the average inter distance to the average intra distance, independent of the scale parameter. Here, the calculated SP value is compared to its statistical distribution obtained by a simulation study for a given partition under the homogeneity null hypothesis to draw a conclusion using standard statistical procedures. The proposed concept is illustrated using three examples representing different types of objects under study. Some general considerations are given regarding the nature of the SP distribution under the null hypothesis and its dependence on the number of divisions and the amount of data within them. A detailed modus operandi (working method) for analyzing a metric data partition is also offered.


SSS: Towards Autonomous Drone Delivery to Your Door Over House-Aware Semantics

Abstract: In this work, we present our attempt to tackle the last-hundred-feet problem for autonomous drone delivery. We take a computer-vision-based approach to progressively landing towards a convenient and safe drop-off point at all times (here, at the front/garage door). Specifically, we develop structural semantic segmentation (SSS), a new technique that leverages a single-family house structure to streamline and enhance semantic segmentation in the drop-to-door problem context. We implement SSS into an Android app; Our preliminary evaluation in a residential zone shows SSS is promising to make autonomous drop-to-door in real-time, with no need to wait for slow visual processing. Video demo is available at Youtube [5]. App is released at Github [6].


BI-RRT*: An improved path planning algorithm for secure and trustworthy mobile robots systems

Abstract: The optimal RRT in elliptic space sampling (Informed-RRT*) is an extension of RRT that provides asymptotic optimality, however, it experiences gradual progress and close to obstacles. In the paper, we propose a novel path planning algorithm guided bidirectional Informed-RRT* (BI-RRT*), that introduces extension range, dual-direction exploration, and refinement in trajectory design. The growth range refers to maintaining an additional area from the obstacle to enhance the dependability of the path through preventing impacts. Bidirectional search is a search strategy using both start and target points for a initial solution. Smoothing improves path robustness by using cubic spline. Furthermore, simulation tests for the BI-RRT* algorithm are executed, and the efficacy of the suggested algorithm is confirmed through its application in a robot operating system (ROS). Simulations and experimental tests verify that the proposed algorithm improves the path planning capability. We emphasize the importance of safety, privacy, and reliability in the deployment of AI systems. Our algorithm ensures that the planned paths maintain a safe distance from obstacles, reducing the risk of collisions. Additionally, we prioritize privacy by adhering to data protection regulations and implementing secure communication protocols within the AI system. Moreover, we have applied rigorous testing and validation processes to enhance the reliability of our algorithm, ensuring consistent and accurate path planning outcomes.


Exploiting Fine-Grained Redundancy in Set-Centric Graph Pattern Mining

Abstract: Graph Pattern Mining (GPM) applications are memory intensive as they require a tremendous amount of edge checks. In recent years, the "set-centric" abstraction has gained attention for its powerful expressive abilities. By leveraging relational algebra, they optimized algorithms with methods like matching orders, early termination, automorphism-breaking, and result reuse to reduce redundancy. However, these approaches primarily address coarse-grained redundancy from exactly the same set formulas, neglecting that the data graph's inherent locality may lead to fine-grained duplicated edge checks. In fact, even unrelated set operations may check the same pair of vertices. This paper introduces the set union operation to the set-centric abstraction to fuse duplicated edge checks into one. It maintains the expressive power of relational algebra and previous optimizations while effectively avoids fine-grained redundancy in GPM tasks. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our method achieves significant speedup on a V100 GPU cluster, demonstrating up to 305 × faster performance than the state-of-the-art GPM system G2Miner.


Two-frame wavefront reconstruction method with nonlinear optimization for Ronchi lateral shearing interferometry

Abstract: Ronchi lateral shearing interferometry is widely applied in wavefront measurement of advanced lithography tools. In Ronchi lateral shearing interferometry, higher-order diffraction beam interference is a common challenge, currently mitigated by introducing more phase shifts, resulting in extended measurement times and added errors. In this study, we propose a nonlinear optimization approach that combines a 2-frame phase-shifting algorithm to suppress the influence of high diffraction orders, reducing the required number of phase shifts by more than 75%. We formulate a numerical model that aligns with the interferometry, construct a highly robust error function, and enable high-precision wavefront reconstruction by optimizing Zernike coefficients. The accuracy and robustness of the proposed method are verified through simulations and experiments.


Introduction

Abstract: The introduction presents the community and ideas at the heart of this anthropological study. When virtual reality reemerged in the mid-2010s, it was praised for its ability to elicit empathy and aid social justice causes. This idea of VR as an empathy machine germinated in Los Angeles, where an active and enthusiastic VR community took shape. While the VR community is heterogeneous and global, in LA there was a persistent conversation about not only VR’s potential to be a good technology but also the necessity of VR being a diverse and inclusive industry. Against the rise of Trumpism, the growing techlash, and the outrages that spurred #MeToo, the VR community in LA imagined the technology and the industry as a salve for these wounds. Several fantasies reinforced this outlook, and the introduction enumerates the fantasy of place, the fantasy of being, and the fantasy of representation as key analytic framings.


A Privacy-Preserving Multilingual Comparable Corpus Construction Method in Internet of Things

Abstract: With the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, multilingual scenarios are gradually increasing, and applications based on multilingual resources are also on the rise. In this process, apart from the need for the construction of multilingual resources, privacy protection issues like data privacy leakage are increasingly highlighted. Comparable corpus is important in multilingual language information processing in IoT. However, the multilingual comparable corpus concerning privacy preserving is rare, so there is an urgent need to construct a multilingual corpus resource. This paper proposes a method for constructing a privacy-preserving multilingual comparable corpus, taking Chinese–Uighur–Tibetan IoT based news as an example, and mapping the different language texts to a unified language vector space to avoid sensitive information, then calculates the similarity between different language texts and serves as a comparability index to construct comparable relations. Through the decision-making mechanism of minimizing the impossibility, it can identify a comparable corpus pair of multilingual texts based on chapter size to realize the construction of a privacy-preserving Chinese–Uighur–Tibetan comparable corpus (CUTCC). Evaluation experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed provable method, which outperforms in accuracy rate by 77%, recall rate by 34% and F value by 47.17%. The CUTCC provides valuable privacy-preserving data resources support and language service for multilingual situations in IoT.


Tetris: Accelerating Sparse Convolution by Exploiting Memory Reuse on GPU

Abstract: Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have achieved remarkable success in various application fields. Although model compression techniques mitigate the ever-increasing resource demands of large CNN models, the compressed models usually exhibit irregular memory access and unstructured sparsity, which are difficult for dominant operators such as sparse convolution to achieve expected performance speedup on popular inference platforms such as GPU. In this paper, we propose Tetris, an efficient sparse convolution approach optimized for GPU. Tetris first fully exploits the input reuse opportunity of sparse convolution to reduce the memory accesses to global memory. It then adopts a stride packed filter (SPF) format and a bank-sensing reorganization scheme to eliminate the irregular memory accesses caused by unstructured sparsity. It also leverages a filter group reorder technique to address load imbalance among threads, and a parameter tuning method to determine the optimal parameters of the sparse convolution implementation. The experiment results show that Tetris outperforms dense/sparse convolution libraries and cutting-edge implementations with promising performance speedup.


Visual-and-Language Multimodal Fusion for Sweeping Robot Navigation Based on CNN and GRU

Abstract: Effectively fusing information between the visual and language modalities remains a significant challenge. To achieve deep integration of natural language and visual information, this research introduces a multimodal fusion neural network model, which combines visual information (RGB images and depth maps) with language information (natural language navigation instructions). Firstly, the authors used faster R-CNN and ResNet50 to extract image features and attention mechanism to further extract effective information. Secondly, GRU model is used to extract language features. Finally, another GRU model is used to fuse the visual- language features, and then the history information is retained to give the next action instruction to the robot. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively addresses the localization and decision-making challenges for robotic vacuum cleaners.


Improving the performance of weak supervision searches using transfer and meta-learning

Abstract: A bstract Weak supervision searches have in principle the advantages of both being able to train on experimental data and being able to learn distinctive signal properties. However, the practical applicability of such searches is limited by the fact that successfully training a neural network via weak supervision can require a large amount of signal. In this work, we seek to create neural networks that can learn from less experimental signal by using transfer and meta-learning. The general idea is to first train a neural network on simulations, thereby learning concepts that can be reused or becoming a more efficient learner. The neural network would then be trained on experimental data and should require less signal because of its previous training. We find that transfer and meta-learning can substantially improve the performance of weak supervision searches.


Applying Named Entity Recognition and Graph Networks to Extract Common Interests from Thematic Subfora on Reddit

Abstract: Reddit is the largest topically structured social network. Existing literature, reporting results of Reddit-related research, considers different phenomena, from social and political studies to recommender systems. The most common techniques used in these works, include natural language processing, e.g., named entity recognition, as well as graph networks representing online social networks. However, large-scale studies that take into account Reddit’s unique structure are scarce. In this contribution, similarity between subreddits is explored. Specifically, subreddit posts (from 3189 subreddits, spanning the year 2022) are processed using NER to build graph networks which are further mined for relations between subreddits. The evaluation of obtained results follows the state-of-the-art approaches used for a similar problem, i.e., recommender system metrics, and applies recall and AUC. Overall, the use of Reddit crossposts discloses previously unknown relations between subreddits. Interestingly, the proposed approach may allow for researchers to better connect their study topics with particular subreddits and shows promise for subreddit similarity mining.


Virtual reality and tourism destinations marketing: can it transform travel? evaluating the impact of immersive experiences on travel intentions

Abstract: This study investigates the relationship between the immersive VR experience, destination cognitive image, destination affective image, and tourists’ travel intention. The sample of this research is 167 visitors of three tourist attractions of Isfahan Province in Iran, through 360-degree virtual reality videos. In order to collect research data, an online survey and convenience sampling methods were used. PLS-SEM was utilised to assess both the measurement and structural models. The findings indicated that among factors of external technical environment stimuli, media richness has a stronger effect on the formation of the destination's cognitive image than the affective image. Also, perceived interactivity compared to media richness has a significant impact on the formation of the destination's affective image. In addition, vision consistency as an internal technical environment stimulus has a positive effect on the formation of the cognitive and affective image of the destination. Finally, the affective image of the destination resulting from the immersive VR experience has a stronger effect on travel intention than the cognitive image.


The future of court's procurators with the advent of artificial intelligence technologies

Abstract: The use of artificial intelligence, as well as the digital transformation and the incorporation of advanced technologies in the field of the justice administration is a fact that has left no one indifferent. The progress of artificial intelligence-based technologies, which are allowing the automation of a multitude of tasks that are currently performed by different operators and legal professionals, will cause that many of these services and routine tasks will be developed by machines, with the consequent loss of prominence of these professional groups. In this context, what is the future for the legal professionals who represent the citizen in Courts? It seems difficult to imagine the need for the figure of Court's Procurator, especially when many other operators and legal professionals could be replaced by intelligent machines. For this reason, this paper will try to analyze the impact that these new technologies will have on the functions that these professionals perform daily on behalf of the parties before the courts. El uso de la inteligencia artificial, así como la transformación digital y la incorporación de tecnologías avanzadas en el ámbito de la Administración de Justicia es un hecho que no ha dejado indiferente a nadie. El avance de las tecnologías basadas en la inteligencia artificial, que están permitiendo la automatización de multitud de tareas que actualmente son realizadas por diferentes operadores y profesionales jurídicos, provocará que muchos de estos servicios y tareas rutinarias sean desarrollados por máquinas, con la consiguiente pérdida de protagonismo de estos colectivos profesionales. En este contexto, ¿cuál es el futuro de los profesionales del Derecho que representan al ciudadano ante los Tribunales? Parece difícil imaginar la necesidad de la figura del Procurador de los Tribunales, máxime cuando muchos otros operadores y profesionales del Derecho podrían ser sustituidos por máquinas inteligentes. Por ello, este trabajo tratará de analizar el impacto que estas nuevas tecnologías tendrán en las funciones que estos profesionales desempeñan diariamente en representación de las partes ante los tribunales.


A Lightweight Multi-Branch Context Network for Unsupervised Underwater Image Restoration

Abstract: Underwater images commonly experience degradation caused by light absorption and scattering in water. Developing lightweight and efficient neural networks to restore degraded images is challenging because of the difficulty in obtaining high-quality paired images and the delicate trade-off between model performance and computational demands. To provide a lightweight and efficient solution for restoring images in terms of color, structure, texture details, etc., enabling the underwater image restoration task to be applied in real-world scenes, we propose an unsupervised lightweight multi-branch context network. Specifically, we design two lightweight multi-branch context subnetworks that enable multiple receptive field feature extraction and long-range dependency modeling to estimate scene radiance and transmission maps. Gaussian blur is adopted to approximate the global background light on the twice-downsampled degraded image. We design a comprehensive loss function that incorporates multiple components, including self-supervised consistency loss and reconstruction loss, to train the network using degraded images in an unsupervised learning manner. Experiments on several underwater image datasets demonstrate that our approach realizes good performance with very few model parameters (0.12 M), and is even comparable to state-of-the-art methods (up to 149 M) in color correction and contrast restoration.


A survey of feature matching methods

Abstract: Abstract Feature matching plays a crucial role in computer vision, with applications in visual localization, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), image stitching, and more. It establishes correspondences between sets of feature points from multiple images, enabling various tasks. Over the years, feature matching has witnessed significant development, with an increasing number of methods being applied. However, different methods exhibit different degrees of applicability in different scenarios and requirements due to their different rationales. To cope with these issues, a comprehensive analysis and comparison of matching methods are essential. Existing reviews often lack coverage of deep learning models and focus more on feature detection and description, neglecting the matching process. This survey investigates feature detection, description, and matching techniques within the feature‐based image‐matching pipeline. Representative methods, their mechanisms, and application scenarios are also briefly introduced. In addition, comprehensive evaluations of classical and state‐of‐the‐art methods are conducted through extensive experiments on representative datasets. Particularly, matching‐based applications are compared to fully demonstrate the advantages of the methods. Lastly, this survey highlights current problems and development directions in matching methods, serving as a reference for researchers in the field.


Data Mining from Knowledge Cases of COVID-19

Abstract: A lot of articles were produced during the pandemic of COVID-19 and continue to be produced. The article proposes a system for diagnosis of COVID-19 disease. Also nowadays, the presentation of knowledge and the research for the reasoning algorithms are progressively improving in the domain of Artificial Intelligence. Besides these, distributed reasoning as a part of data mining has become a solution for the increasing everyday data amount. As a result, the paper proposes a case-based non-monotonic reasoner for uncertain and vague COVID-19 information that is appropriate for work with Big Data. Also, a COVID-19 knowledge base model is proposed. The reasoner implements rules for the distribution of the information that gives the possibility to work with Big data. The proposed reasoning algorithm is applied for COVID-19. It shows the implementation of the reasoner into the data mining system and the returned results from the system are evaluated. The results show that the system returns relatively high results concerning the other system for recommendation.


The least sample size essential for detecting changes in clustering solutions of streaming datasets

Abstract: The clustering analysis approach treats multivariate data tuples as objects and groups them into clusters based on their similarities or dissimilarities within the dataset. However, in modern world, a significant volume of data is continuously generated from diverse sources over time. In these dynamic scenarios, the data is not static but continually evolves. Consequently, the interesting patterns and inherent subgroups within the datasets also change and develop over time. The researchers have paid special attention to monitoring changes in cluster solutions of evolving streams. For this matter, several algorithms have been proposed in the literature. However, to date, no study has examined the effect of variability in cluster sizes on the evolution of cluster solutions. Moreover, no guidance is available on determining the impact of cluster sizes on the type of changes they experience in the streams. In the present simulation study using artificial datasets, the evolution of clusters is examined concerning the variability in cluster sizes. The findings are substantial because tracing and monitoring the changes in clustering solutions have a wide range of applications in every field of research. This study determines the minimum sample size required in the clustering of time-stamped datasets.


Error Analysis and Condition Estimation of the Pyramidal Form of the Lucas-Kanade Method in Optical Flow

Abstract: Optical flow is the apparent motion of the brightness patterns in an image. The pyramidal form of the Lucas-Kanade (LK) method is frequently used for its computation but experiments have shown that the method has deficiencies. Problems arise because of numerical issues in the least squares (LS) problem minAx−b22, A∈Rm×2 and m≫2, which must be solved many times. Numerical properties of the solution x0=A†b = (ATA)−1ATb of the LS problem are considered and it is shown that the property m≫2 has implications for the error and stability of x0. In particular, it can be assumed that b has components that lie in the column space (range) R(A) of A, and the space that is orthogonal to R(A), from which it follows that the upper bound of the condition number of x0 is inversely proportional to cosθ, where θ is the angle between b and its component that lies in R(A). It is shown that the maximum values of this condition number, other condition numbers and the errors in the solutions of the LS problems increase as the pyramid is descended from the top level (coarsest image) to the base (finest image), such that the optical flow computed at the base of the pyramid may be computationally unreliable. The extension of these results to the problem of total least squares is addressed by considering the stability of the optical flow vectors when there are errors in A and b. Examples of the computation of the optical flow demonstrate the theoretical results, and the implications of these results for extended forms of the LK method are discussed.