Optimization of transit smart card data publishing based on differential privacy

“Privacy budget allocation is a key step of the differential privacy (DP)-based privacy-preserving data publishing (PPDP) algorithm development, as it directly impacts the data utility of the released dataset. This research describes the development of an optimal privacy budget allocation algorithm for transit smart card data publishing, with the goal of publishing non-interactive sanitized trajectory data under a differential privacy definition. To this end, after storing the smart card trajectory data with a prefix tree structure, a query probability model is built to quantitatively measure the probability of a trajectory location pair being queried. Next, privacy budget is calculated for each prefix tree node to minimize the query error, while satisfying the differential privacy definition. The optimal privacy budget values are derived with Lagrangian relaxation method, with several solution property proposed. Real-life metro smart card data from Shenzhen, China that includes a total of 2.8 million individual travelers and over 220 million records is used in the case study section. The developed algorithm is demonstrated to output sanitized dataset with higher utilities when compared with previous research”--Abstract, page iii

A Re-ranking Model for Dependency Parser with Recursive Convolutional Neural Network

In this work, we address the problem to model all the nodes (words or phrases) in a dependency tree with the dense representations. We propose a recursive convolutional neural network (RCNN) architecture to capture syntactic and compositional-semantic representations of phrases and words in a dependency tree. Different with the original recursive neural network, we introduce the convolution and pooling layers, which can model a variety of compositions by the feature maps and choose the most informative compositions by the pooling layers. Based on RCNN, we use a discriminative model to re-rank a $k$-best list of candidate dependency parsing trees. The experiments show that RCNN is very effective to improve the state-of-the-art dependency parsing on both English and Chinese datasets

Bearing fault diagnosis via kernel matrix construction based support vector machine

A novel approach on kernel matrix construction for support vector machine (SVM) is proposed to detect rolling element bearing fault efficiently. First, multi-scale coefficient matrix is achieved by processing vibration sample signal with continuous wavelet transform (CWT). Next, singular value decomposition (SVD) is applied to calculate eigenvector from wavelet coefficient matrix as sample signal feature vector. Two kernel matrices i.e. training kernel and predicting kernel, are then constructed in a novel way, which can reveal intrinsic similarity among samples and make it feasible to solve nonlinear classification problems in a high dimensional feature space. To validate its diagnosis performance, kernel matrix construction based SVM (KMCSVM) classifier is compared with three SVM classifiers i.e. classification tree kernel based SVM (CTKSVM), linear kernel based SVM (L-SVM) and radial basis function based SVM (RBFSVM), to identify different locations and severities of bearing fault. The experimental results indicate that KMCSVM has better classification capability than other methods

Deformable Groupwise Registration Using a Locally Low-Rank Dissimilarity Metric for Myocardial Strain Estimation from Cardiac Cine MRI Images

Objective: Cardiovascular magnetic resonance-feature tracking (CMR-FT) represents a group of methods for myocardial strain estimation from cardiac cine MRI images. Established CMR-FT methods are mainly based on optical flow or pairwise registration. However, these methods suffer from either inaccurate estimation of large motion or drift effect caused by accumulative tracking errors. In this work, we propose a deformable groupwise registration method using a locally low-rank (LLR) dissimilarity metric for CMR-FT. Methods: The proposed method (Groupwise-LLR) tracks the feature points by a groupwise registration-based two-step strategy. Unlike the globally low-rank (GLR) dissimilarity metric, the proposed LLR metric imposes low-rankness on local image patches rather than the whole image. We quantitatively compared Groupwise-LLR with the Farneback optical flow, a pairwise registration method, and a GLR-based groupwise registration method on simulated and in vivo datasets. Results: Results from the simulated dataset showed that Groupwise-LLR achieved more accurate tracking and strain estimation compared with the other methods. Results from the in vivo dataset showed that Groupwise-LLR achieved more accurate tracking and elimination of the drift effect in late-diastole. Inter-observer reproducibility of strain estimates was similar between all studied methods. Conclusion: The proposed method estimates myocardial strains more accurately due to the application of a groupwise registration-based tracking strategy and an LLR-based dissimilarity metric. Significance: The proposed CMR-FT method may facilitate more accurate estimation of myocardial strains, especially in diastole, for clinical assessments of cardiac dysfunction

Reliability Analysis of Memristor Crossbar Routers: Collisions and On/off Ratio Requirement

Memristors are commonly used in crossbar arrays as “in-memory computing” elements to solve the von-Neumann bottleneck problem. However, they can also be used as “in-memory routing” elements to configure on-chip interconnection schemes and route signals among computing elements in configurable multi-core neuromorphic processors. While there has been a significant focus on the use of memristive devices as in-memory computing elements, to date, studies on the fundamental reliability properties of memristors as routing elements are still missing. In this paper, we analyze the reliability issues of using these devices in routing crossbar arrays, caused by sharing routing resources (collisions), and undesired pulses due to the leakage paths (on/off ratio requirement). We show that there is a trade-off between routing collision probability and the degree of connectivity (i.e., fan-in) of the receivers sharing routing channels. We provide specifications and guidelines based on a theoretical analysis for engineering the properties of memristive devices, and for designing routing systems based on memristor crossbars

The Expression Levels of XLF and Mutant P53 Are Inversely Correlated in Head and Neck Cancer Cells.

XRCC4-like factor (XLF), also known as Cernunnos, is a protein encoded by the human NHEJ1 gene and an important repair factor for DNA double-strand breaks. In this study, we have found that XLF is over-expressed in HPV(+) versus HPV(-) head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and significantly down-regulated in the HNSCC cell lines expressing high level of mutant p53 protein versus those cell lines harboring wild-type TP53 gene with low p53 protein expression. We have also demonstrated that Werner syndrome protein (WRN), a member of the NHEJ repair pathway, binds to both mutant p53 protein and NHEJ1 gene promoter, and siRNA knockdown of WRN leads to the inhibition of XLF expression in the HNSCC cells. Collectively, these findings suggest that WRN and p53 are involved in the regulation of XLF expression and the activity of WRN might be affected by mutant p53 protein in the HNSCC cells with aberrant TP53 gene mutations, due to the interaction of mutant p53 with WRN. As a result, the expression of XLF in these cancer cells is significantly suppressed. Our study also suggests that XLF is over-expressed in HPV(+) HNSCC with low expression of wild type p53, and might serve as a potential biomarker for HPV(+) HNSCC. Further studies are warranted to investigate the mechanisms underlying the interactive role of WRN and XLF in NHEJ repair pathway

Enhancing Mixed Traffic Flow Safety Via Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Trajectory Planning with a Reinforcement Learning Approach

The longitudinal trajectory planning of connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) has been widely studied in the literature to reduce travel time or fuel consumptions. The safety impact of CAV trajectory planning to the mixed traffic flow with both CAV and human-driven vehicle (HDV), however, is not well understood yet. This study presents a reinforcement learning modeling approach, named Monte Carlo tree search-based autonomous vehicle safety algorithm, or MCTS-AVS, to optimize the safety of mixed traffic flow, on a one-lane roadway with signalized intersection control. Crash potential index (CPI) is defined to quantitively measure the safety performance of the mixed traffic flow. The CAV trajectory planning problem is firstly formulated as an optimization model; then, the solution procedure based on reinforcement learning is proposed. The tree-expansion determination module and rollout termination module are developed to identify and reduce the unnecessary tree expansion, so as to train the model more efficiently towards the desired direction. The case study results showed that the proposed algorithm was able to reduce the CPI by 76.56%, when compared with a benchmark model without any intelligence, and 12.08%, when compared with another benchmark model that the team developed earlier. These results demonstrated the satisfactory performance of the proposed algorithm in enhancing the safety of the mixed traffic flow