Beyond the Alphabet: Deep Signal Embedding for Enhanced DNA Clustering

The emerging field of DNA storage employs strands of DNA bases (A/T/C/G) as a storage medium for digital information to enable massive density and durability. The DNA storage pipeline includes: (1) encoding the raw data into sequences of DNA bases; (2) synthesizing the sequences as DNA \textit{strands} that are stored over time as an unordered set; (3) sequencing the DNA strands to generate DNA \textit{reads}; and (4) deducing the original data. The DNA synthesis and sequencing stages each generate several independent error-prone duplicates of each strand which are then utilized in the final stage to reconstruct the best estimate for the original strand. Specifically, the reads are first \textit{clustered} into groups likely originating from the same strand (based on their similarity to each other), and then each group approximates the strand that led to the reads of that group. This work improves the DNA clustering stage by embedding it as part of the DNA sequencing. Traditional DNA storage solutions begin after the DNA sequencing process generates discrete DNA reads (A/T/C/G), yet we identify that there is untapped potential in using the raw signals generated by the Nanopore DNA sequencing machine before they are discretized into bases, a process known as \textit{basecalling}, which is done using a deep neural network. We propose a deep neural network that clusters these signals directly, demonstrating superior accuracy, and reduced computation times compared to current approaches that cluster after basecalling.

Estimating the Number of HTTP/3 Responses in QUIC Using Deep Learning

QUIC, a new and increasingly used transport protocol, enhances TCP by providing better security, performance, and features like stream multiplexing. These features, however, also impose challenges for network middle-boxes that need to monitor and analyze web traffic. This paper proposes a novel solution for estimating the number of HTTP/3 responses in a given QUIC connection by an observer. This estimation reveals server behavior, client-server interactions, and data transmission efficiency, which is crucial for various applications such as designing a load balancing solution and detecting HTTP/3 flood attacks. The proposed scheme transforms QUIC connection traces into a sequence of images and trains machine learning (ML) models to predict the number of responses. Then, by aggregating images of a QUIC connection, an observer can estimate the total number of responses. As the problem is formulated as a discrete regression problem, we introduce a dedicated loss function. The proposed scheme is evaluated on a dataset of over seven million images, generated from $100,000$ traces collected from over $44,000$ websites over a four-month period, from various vantage points. The scheme achieves up to 97\% cumulative accuracy in both known and unknown web server settings and 92\% accuracy in estimating the total number of responses in unseen QUIC traces.

Automatic Identification and Visualization of Group Training Activities Using Wearable Data

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) identifies daily activities from time-series data collected by wearable devices like smartwatches. Recent advancements in Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and low-cost sensors have broadened HAR applications across fields like healthcare, biometrics, sports, and personal fitness. However, challenges remain in efficiently processing the vast amounts of data generated by these devices and developing models that can accurately recognize a wide range of activities from continuous recordings, without relying on predefined activity training sessions. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for imputing, analyzing, and identifying activities from wearable data, specifically targeting group training scenarios without explicit activity sessions. Our approach is based on data collected from 135 soldiers wearing Garmin 55 smartwatches over six months. The framework integrates multiple data streams, handles missing data through cross-domain statistical methods, and identifies activities with high accuracy using machine learning (ML). Additionally, we utilized statistical analysis techniques to evaluate the performance of each individual within the group, providing valuable insights into their respective positions in the group in an easy-to-understand visualization. These visualizations facilitate easy understanding of performance metrics, enhancing group interactions and informing individualized training programs. We evaluate our framework through traditional train-test splits and out-of-sample scenarios, focusing on the model's generalization capabilities. Additionally, we address sleep data imputation without relying on ML, improving recovery analysis. Our findings demonstrate the potential of wearable data for accurately identifying group activities, paving the way for intelligent, data-driven training solutions.

Vector Quantile Regression on Manifolds

Quantile regression (QR) is a statistical tool for distribution-free estimation of conditional quantiles of a target variable given explanatory features. QR is limited by the assumption that the target distribution is univariate and defined on an Euclidean domain. Although the notion of quantiles was recently extended to multi-variate distributions, QR for multi-variate distributions on manifolds remains underexplored, even though many important applications inherently involve data distributed on, e.g., spheres (climate measurements), tori (dihedral angles in proteins), or Lie groups (attitude in navigation). By leveraging optimal transport theory and the notion of $c$-concave functions, we meaningfully define conditional vector quantile functions of high-dimensional variables on manifolds (M-CVQFs). Our approach allows for quantile estimation, regression, and computation of conditional confidence sets. We demonstrate the approach's efficacy and provide insights regarding the meaning of non-Euclidean quantiles through preliminary synthetic data experiments.

Designing Nonlinear Photonic Crystals for High-Dimensional Quantum State Engineering

We propose a novel, physically-constrained and differentiable approach for the generation of D-dimensional qudit states via spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in quantum optics. We circumvent any limitations imposed by the inherently stochastic nature of the physical process and incorporate a set of stochastic dynamical equations governing its evolution under the SPDC Hamiltonian. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model through the design of structured nonlinear photonic crystals (NLPCs) and shaped pump beams; and show, theoretically and experimentally, how to generate maximally entangled states in the spatial degree of freedom. The learning of NLPC structures offers a promising new avenue for shaping and controlling arbitrary quantum states and enables all-optical coherent control of the generated states. We believe that this approach can readily be extended from bulky crystals to thin Metasurfaces and potentially applied to other quantum systems sharing a similar Hamiltonian structures, such as superfluids and superconductors.

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Scheduling and Power Allocation in a 5G Urban Mesh

We study the problem of routing and scheduling of real-time flows over a multi-hop millimeter wave (mmWave) mesh. We develop a model-free deep reinforcement learning algorithm that determines which subset of the mmWave links should be activated during each time slot and using what power level. The proposed algorithm, called Adaptive Activator RL (AARL), can handle a variety of network topologies, network loads, and interference models, as well as adapt to different workloads. We demonstrate the operation of AARL on several topologies: a small topology with 10 links, a moderately-sized mesh with 48 links, and a large topology with 96 links. For each topology, the results of AARL are compared to those of a greedy scheduling algorithm. AARL is shown to outperform the greedy algorithm in two aspects. First, its schedule obtains higher goodput. Second, and even more importantly, while the run time of the greedy algorithm renders it impractical for real-time scheduling, the run time of AARL is suitable for meeting the time constraints of typical 5G networks.

Transformer Vs. MLP-Mixer Exponential Expressive Gap For NLP Problems

Vision-Transformers are widely used in various vision tasks. Meanwhile, there is another line of works starting with the MLP-mixer trying to achieve similar performance using mlp-based architectures. Interestingly, until now none reported using them for NLP tasks, additionally until now non of those mlp-based architectures claimed to achieve state-of-the-art in vision tasks. In this paper, we analyze the expressive power of mlp-based architectures in modeling dependencies between multiple different inputs simultaneously, and show an exponential gap between the attention and the mlp-based mechanisms. Our results suggest a theoretical explanation for the mlp inability to compete with attention-based mechanisms in NLP problems, they also suggest that the performance gap in vision tasks may be due to the mlp relative weakness in modeling dependencies between multiple different locations, and that combining smart input permutations to the mlp architectures may not suffice alone to close the performance gap.

Random Search Hyper-Parameter Tuning: Expected Improvement Estimation and the Corresponding Lower Bound

Hyperparameter tuning is a common technique for improving the performance of neural networks. Most techniques for hyperparameter search involve an iterated process where the model is retrained at every iteration. However, the expected accuracy improvement from every additional search iteration, is still unknown. Calculating the expected improvement can help create stopping rules for hyperparameter tuning and allow for a wiser allocation of a project's computational budget. In this paper, we establish an empirical estimate for the expected accuracy improvement from an additional iteration of hyperparameter search. Our results hold for any hyperparameter tuning method which is based on random search \cite{bergstra2012random} and samples hyperparameters from a fixed distribution. We bound our estimate with an error of $O\left(\sqrt{\frac{\log k}{k}}\right)$ w.h.p. where $k$ is the current number of iterations. To the best of our knowledge this is the first bound on the expected gain from an additional iteration of hyperparameter search. Finally, we demonstrate that the optimal estimate for the expected accuracy will still have an error of $\frac{1}{k}$.

Physical Passive Patch Adversarial Attacks on Visual Odometry Systems

Deep neural networks are known to be susceptible to adversarial perturbations -- small perturbations that alter the output of the network and exist under strict norm limitations. While such perturbations are usually discussed as tailored to a specific input, a universal perturbation can be constructed to alter the model's output on a set of inputs. Universal perturbations present a more realistic case of adversarial attacks, as awareness of the model's exact input is not required. In addition, the universal attack setting raises the subject of generalization to unseen data, where given a set of inputs, the universal perturbations aim to alter the model's output on out-of-sample data. In this work, we study physical passive patch adversarial attacks on visual odometry-based autonomous navigation systems. A visual odometry system aims to infer the relative camera motion between two corresponding viewpoints, and is frequently used by vision-based autonomous navigation systems to estimate their state. For such navigation systems, a patch adversarial perturbation poses a severe security issue, as it can be used to mislead a system onto some collision course. To the best of our knowledge, we show for the first time that the error margin of a visual odometry model can be significantly increased by deploying patch adversarial attacks in the scene. We provide evaluation on synthetic closed-loop drone navigation data and demonstrate that a comparable vulnerability exists in real data. A reference implementation of the proposed method and the reported experiments is provided at https://github.com/patchadversarialattacks/patchadversarialattacks.

Fast Nonlinear Vector Quantile Regression

Quantile regression (QR) is a powerful tool for estimating one or more conditional quantiles of a target variable $\mathrm{Y}$ given explanatory features $\boldsymbol{\mathrm{X}}$. A limitation of QR is that it is only defined for scalar target variables, due to the formulation of its objective function, and since the notion of quantiles has no standard definition for multivariate distributions. Recently, vector quantile regression (VQR) was proposed as an extension of QR for high-dimensional target variables, thanks to a meaningful generalization of the notion of quantiles to multivariate distributions. Despite its elegance, VQR is arguably not applicable in practice due to several limitations: (i) it assumes a linear model for the quantiles of the target $\mathrm{Y}$ given the features $\boldsymbol{\mathrm{X}}$; (ii) its exact formulation is intractable even for modestly-sized problems in terms of target dimensions, number of regressed quantile levels, or number of features, and its relaxed dual formulation may violate the monotonicity of the estimated quantiles; (iii) no fast or scalable solvers for VQR currently exist. In this work we fully address these limitations, namely: (i) We extend VQR to the non-linear case, showing substantial improvement over linear VQR; (ii) We propose vector monotone rearrangement, a method which ensures the estimates obtained by VQR relaxations are monotone functions; (iii) We provide fast, GPU-accelerated solvers for linear and nonlinear VQR which maintain a fixed memory footprint with number of samples and quantile levels, and demonstrate that they scale to millions of samples and thousands of quantile levels; (iv) We release an optimized python package of our solvers as to widespread the use of VQR in real-world applications.