18,449 research outputs found
An Analysis Tool for Push-Sum Based Distributed Optimization
The push-sum algorithm is probably the most important distributed averaging
approach over directed graphs, which has been applied to various problems
including distributed optimization. This paper establishes the explicit
absolute probability sequence for the push-sum algorithm, and based on which,
constructs quadratic Lyapunov functions for push-sum based distributed
optimization algorithms. As illustrative examples, the proposed novel analysis
tool can improve the convergence rates of the subgradient-push and stochastic
gradient-push, two important algorithms for distributed convex optimization
over unbalanced directed graphs. Specifically, the paper proves that the
subgradient-push algorithm converges at a rate of for general
convex functions and stochastic gradient-push algorithm converges at a rate of
for strongly convex functions, over time-varying unbalanced directed
graphs. Both rates are respectively the same as the state-of-the-art rates of
their single-agent counterparts and thus optimal, which closes the theoretical
gap between the centralized and push-sum based (sub)gradient methods. The paper
further proposes a heterogeneous push-sum based subgradient algorithm in which
each agent can arbitrarily switch between subgradient-push and
push-subgradient. The heterogeneous algorithm thus subsumes both
subgradient-push and push-subgradient as special cases, and still converges to
an optimal point at an optimal rate. The proposed tool can also be extended to
analyze distributed weighted averaging.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2203.16623,
arXiv:2303.1706
Security and Privacy Problems in Voice Assistant Applications: A Survey
Voice assistant applications have become omniscient nowadays. Two models that
provide the two most important functions for real-life applications (i.e.,
Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Siri, etc.) are Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
models and Speaker Identification (SI) models. According to recent studies,
security and privacy threats have also emerged with the rapid development of
the Internet of Things (IoT). The security issues researched include attack
techniques toward machine learning models and other hardware components widely
used in voice assistant applications. The privacy issues include technical-wise
information stealing and policy-wise privacy breaches. The voice assistant
application takes a steadily growing market share every year, but their privacy
and security issues never stopped causing huge economic losses and endangering
users' personal sensitive information. Thus, it is important to have a
comprehensive survey to outline the categorization of the current research
regarding the security and privacy problems of voice assistant applications.
This paper concludes and assesses five kinds of security attacks and three
types of privacy threats in the papers published in the top-tier conferences of
cyber security and voice domain.Comment: 5 figure
Towards Advantages of Parameterized Quantum Pulses
The advantages of quantum pulses over quantum gates have attracted increasing
attention from researchers. Quantum pulses offer benefits such as flexibility,
high fidelity, scalability, and real-time tuning. However, while there are
established workflows and processes to evaluate the performance of quantum
gates, there has been limited research on profiling parameterized pulses and
providing guidance for pulse circuit design. To address this gap, our study
proposes a set of design spaces for parameterized pulses, evaluating these
pulses based on metrics such as expressivity, entanglement capability, and
effective parameter dimension. Using these design spaces, we demonstrate the
advantages of parameterized pulses over gate circuits in the aspect of duration
and performance at the same time thus enabling high-performance quantum
computing. Our proposed design space for parameterized pulse circuits has shown
promising results in quantum chemistry benchmarks.Comment: 11 Figures, 4 Table
The Metaverse: Survey, Trends, Novel Pipeline Ecosystem & Future Directions
The Metaverse offers a second world beyond reality, where boundaries are
non-existent, and possibilities are endless through engagement and immersive
experiences using the virtual reality (VR) technology. Many disciplines can
benefit from the advancement of the Metaverse when accurately developed,
including the fields of technology, gaming, education, art, and culture.
Nevertheless, developing the Metaverse environment to its full potential is an
ambiguous task that needs proper guidance and directions. Existing surveys on
the Metaverse focus only on a specific aspect and discipline of the Metaverse
and lack a holistic view of the entire process. To this end, a more holistic,
multi-disciplinary, in-depth, and academic and industry-oriented review is
required to provide a thorough study of the Metaverse development pipeline. To
address these issues, we present in this survey a novel multi-layered pipeline
ecosystem composed of (1) the Metaverse computing, networking, communications
and hardware infrastructure, (2) environment digitization, and (3) user
interactions. For every layer, we discuss the components that detail the steps
of its development. Also, for each of these components, we examine the impact
of a set of enabling technologies and empowering domains (e.g., Artificial
Intelligence, Security & Privacy, Blockchain, Business, Ethics, and Social) on
its advancement. In addition, we explain the importance of these technologies
to support decentralization, interoperability, user experiences, interactions,
and monetization. Our presented study highlights the existing challenges for
each component, followed by research directions and potential solutions. To the
best of our knowledge, this survey is the most comprehensive and allows users,
scholars, and entrepreneurs to get an in-depth understanding of the Metaverse
ecosystem to find their opportunities and potentials for contribution
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Ensuring Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for All Through the Transformation of Food Systems
The Viability and Potential Consequences of IoT-Based Ransomware
With the increased threat of ransomware and the substantial growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) market, there is significant motivation for attackers to carry out IoT-based ransomware campaigns. In this thesis, the viability of such malware is tested.
As part of this work, various techniques that could be used by ransomware developers to attack commercial IoT devices were explored. First, methods that attackers could use to communicate with the victim were examined, such that a ransom note was able to be reliably sent to a victim. Next, the viability of using "bricking" as a method of ransom was evaluated, such that devices could be remotely disabled unless the victim makes a payment to the attacker. Research was then performed to ascertain whether it was possible to remotely gain persistence on IoT devices, which would improve the efficacy of existing ransomware methods, and provide opportunities for more advanced ransomware to be created. Finally, after successfully identifying a number of persistence techniques, the viability of privacy-invasion based ransomware was analysed.
For each assessed technique, proofs of concept were developed. A range of devices -- with various intended purposes, such as routers, cameras and phones -- were used to test the viability of these proofs of concept. To test communication hijacking, devices' "channels of communication" -- such as web services and embedded screens -- were identified, then hijacked to display custom ransom notes. During the analysis of bricking-based ransomware, a working proof of concept was created, which was then able to remotely brick five IoT devices. After analysing the storage design of an assortment of IoT devices, six different persistence techniques were identified, which were then successfully tested on four devices, such that malicious filesystem modifications would be retained after the device was rebooted. When researching privacy-invasion based ransomware, several methods were created to extract information from data sources that can be commonly found on IoT devices, such as nearby WiFi signals, images from cameras, or audio from microphones. These were successfully implemented in a test environment such that ransomable data could be extracted, processed, and stored for later use to blackmail the victim.
Overall, IoT-based ransomware has not only been shown to be viable but also highly damaging to both IoT devices and their users. While the use of IoT-ransomware is still very uncommon "in the wild", the techniques demonstrated within this work highlight an urgent need to improve the security of IoT devices to avoid the risk of IoT-based ransomware causing havoc in our society. Finally, during the development of these proofs of concept, a number of potential countermeasures were identified, which can be used to limit the effectiveness of the attacking techniques discovered in this PhD research
Conditional Adapters: Parameter-efficient Transfer Learning with Fast Inference
We propose Conditional Adapter (CoDA), a parameter-efficient transfer
learning method that also improves inference efficiency. CoDA generalizes
beyond standard adapter approaches to enable a new way of balancing speed and
accuracy using conditional computation. Starting with an existing dense
pretrained model, CoDA adds sparse activation together with a small number of
new parameters and a light-weight training phase. Our experiments demonstrate
that the CoDA approach provides an unexpectedly efficient way to transfer
knowledge. Across a variety of language, vision, and speech tasks, CoDA
achieves a 2x to 8x inference speed-up compared to the state-of-the-art Adapter
approach with moderate to no accuracy loss and the same parameter efficiency
CoRe-Sleep: A Multimodal Fusion Framework for Time Series Robust to Imperfect Modalities
Sleep abnormalities can have severe health consequences. Automated sleep
staging, i.e. labelling the sequence of sleep stages from the patient's
physiological recordings, could simplify the diagnostic process. Previous work
on automated sleep staging has achieved great results, mainly relying on the
EEG signal. However, often multiple sources of information are available beyond
EEG. This can be particularly beneficial when the EEG recordings are noisy or
even missing completely. In this paper, we propose CoRe-Sleep, a Coordinated
Representation multimodal fusion network that is particularly focused on
improving the robustness of signal analysis on imperfect data. We demonstrate
how appropriately handling multimodal information can be the key to achieving
such robustness. CoRe-Sleep tolerates noisy or missing modalities segments,
allowing training on incomplete data. Additionally, it shows state-of-the-art
performance when testing on both multimodal and unimodal data using a single
model on SHHS-1, the largest publicly available study that includes sleep stage
labels. The results indicate that training the model on multimodal data does
positively influence performance when tested on unimodal data. This work aims
at bridging the gap between automated analysis tools and their clinical
utility.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, journa
Technical Dimensions of Programming Systems
Programming requires much more than just writing code in a programming language. It is usually done in the context of a stateful environment, by interacting with a system through a graphical user interface. Yet, this wide space of possibilities lacks a common structure for navigation. Work on programming systems fails to form a coherent body of research, making it hard to improve on past work and advance the state of the art.
In computer science, much has been said and done to allow comparison of programming languages, yet no similar theory exists for programming systems; we believe that programming systems deserve a theory too.
We present a framework of technical dimensions which capture the underlying characteristics of programming systems and provide a means for conceptualizing and comparing them.
We identify technical dimensions by examining past influential programming systems and reviewing their design principles, technical capabilities, and styles of user interaction. Technical dimensions capture characteristics that may be studied, compared and advanced independently. This makes it possible to talk about programming systems in a way that can be shared and constructively debated rather than relying solely on personal impressions.
Our framework is derived using a qualitative analysis of past programming systems. We outline two concrete ways of using our framework. First, we show how it can analyze a recently developed novel programming system. Then, we use it to identify an interesting unexplored point in the design space of programming systems.
Much research effort focuses on building programming systems that are easier to use, accessible to non-experts, moldable and/or powerful, but such efforts are disconnected. They are informal, guided by the personal vision of their authors and thus are only evaluable and comparable on the basis of individual experience using them. By providing foundations for more systematic research, we can help programming systems researchers to stand, at last, on the shoulders of giants
Audio-Visual Automatic Speech Recognition Towards Education for Disabilities
Education is a fundamental right that enriches everyone’s life. However, physically challenged people often debar from the general and advanced education system. Audio-Visual Automatic Speech Recognition (AV-ASR) based system is useful to improve the education of physically challenged people by providing hands-free computing. They can communicate to the learning system through AV-ASR. However, it is challenging to trace the lip correctly for visual modality. Thus, this paper addresses the appearance-based visual feature along with the co-occurrence statistical measure for visual speech recognition. Local Binary Pattern-Three Orthogonal Planes (LBP-TOP) and Grey-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) is proposed for visual speech information. The experimental results show that the proposed system achieves 76.60 % accuracy for visual speech and 96.00 % accuracy for audio speech recognition
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