arXiv subjects

Xue Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Xue Liu.

263 records · Page 15Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

PFO: A Parallel Friendly High Performance System for Online Query and Update of Nearest Neighbors

Nearest Neighbor(s) search is the fundamental computational primitive to tackle massive dataset. Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) has been a bracing tool for Nearest Neighbor(s) search in high dimensional spaces. However, traditional LSH systems cannot be applied in online big data systems to handle a large volume of query/update requests, because most of the systems optimize the query efficiency with the assumption of infrequent updates and missing the parallel-friendly design. As a result, the state-of-the-art LSH systems cannot adapt the system response to the user behavior interactively. In this paper, we propose a new LSH system called PFO. It handles query/update requests in RAM and scales the system capacity by using flash memory. To achieve high streaming data throughput, PFO adopts a parallel-friendly indexing structure while preserving the distance between data points. Further, it accommodates inbound data in real-time and dispatches update requests intelligently to eliminate the cross-threads synchronization. We carried out extensive evaluations with large synthetic and standard benchmark datasets. Results demonstrate that PFO delivers shorter latency and offers scalable capacity compared with the existing LSH systems. PFO serves with higher throughput than the state-of-the-art LSH indexing structure when dealing with online query/update requests to nearest neighbors. Meanwhile, PFO returns neighbors with much better quality, thus being efficient to handle online big data applications, e.g. streaming recommendation system, interactive machine learning systems.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2016

Topological nodal-line fermions in ZrSiSe and ZrSiTe

The discovery of topological semimetal phase in three-dimensional (3D) systems is a new breakthrough in topological material research. Dirac nodal-line semimetal is one of the three topological semimetal phases discovered so far; it is characterized by linear band crossing along a line/loop, contrasted with the linear band crossing at discrete momentum points in 3D Dirac and Weyl semimetals. The study of nodal-line semimetal is still at initial stage; only three material systems have been verified to host nodal line fermions until now, including PbTaSe2, PtSn 4and ZrSiS. In this letter, we report evidence of nodal line fermions in ZrSiSe and ZrSiTe probed in de Haas - van Alphen (dHvA) quantum oscillations. Although ZrSiSe and ZrSiTe share similar layered structure with ZrSiS, our measurements of angular dependences of dHvA oscillations indicate the Fermi surface (FS) enclosing Dirac nodal line is of 2D character in ZiSiTe, in contrast with 3D-like FS in ZrSiSe and ZrSiS. Another important property revealed in our experiment is that the nodal line fermion density in ZrSi(S/Se) (~ 10^20-10^21 cm^-3) is much higher than the Dirac/Weyl fermion density of any known topological materials. In addition, we have demonstrated ZrSiSe and ZrSiTe single crystals can be thinned down to 2D atomic thin layers through microexfoliation, which offers a promising platform to verify the predicted 2D topological insulator in the monolayer materials with ZrSiS-type structure

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2015

Does "Like" Really Mean Like? A Study of the Facebook Fake Like Phenomenon and an Efficient Countermeasure

Social networks help to bond people who share similar interests all over the world. As a complement, the Facebook "Like" button is an efficient tool that bonds people with the online information. People click on the "Like" button to express their fondness of a particular piece of information and in turn tend to visit webpages with high "Like" count. The important fact of the Like count is that it reflects the number of actual users who "liked" this information. However, according to our study, one can easily exploit the defects of the "Like" button to counterfeit a high "Like" count. We provide a proof-of-concept implementation of these exploits, and manage to generate 100 fake Likes in 5 minutes with a single account. We also reveal existing counterfeiting techniques used by some online sellers to achieve unfair advantage for promoting their products. To address this fake Like problem, we study the varying patterns of Like count and propose an innovative fake Like detection method based on clustering. To evaluate the effectiveness of our algorithm, we collect the Like count history of more than 9,000 websites. Our experiments successfully uncover 16 suspicious fake Like buyers that show abnormal Like count increase patterns.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2015

Characterizing Information Spreading in Online Social Networks

Online social networks (OSNs) are changing the way in which the information spreads throughout the Internet. A deep understanding of the information spreading in OSNs leads to both social and commercial benefits. In this paper, we characterize the dynamic of information spreading (e.g., how fast and widely the information spreads against time) in OSNs by developing a general and accurate model based on the Interactive Markov Chains (IMCs) and mean-field theory. This model explicitly reveals the impacts of the network topology on information spreading in OSNs. Further, we extend our model to feature the time-varying user behaviors and the ever-changing information popularity. The complicated dynamic patterns of information spreading are captured by our model using six key parameters. Extensive tests based on Renren's dataset validate the accuracy of our model, which demonstrate that it can characterize the dynamic patterns of video sharing in Renren precisely and predict future spreading tendency successfully.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2014

Gate Tunable Quantum Oscillations in Air-Stable and High Mobility Few-Layer Phosphorene Heterostructures

As the only non-carbon elemental layered allotrope, few-layer black phosphorus or phosphorene has emerged as a novel two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor with both high bulk mobility and a band gap. Here we report fabrication and transport measurements of phosphorene-hexagonal BN (hBN) heterostructures with one-dimensional (1D) edge contacts. These transistors are stable in ambient conditions for >300 hours, and display ambipolar behavior, a gate-dependent metal-insulator transition, and mobility up to 4000 $cm^2$/Vs. At low temperatures, we observe gate-tunable Shubnikov de Haas (SdH) magneto-oscillations and Zeeman splitting in magnetic field with an estimated g-factor ~2. The cyclotron mass of few-layer phosphorene holes is determined to increase from 0.25 to 0.31 $m_e$ as the Fermi level moves towards the valence band edge. Our results underscore the potential of few-layer phosphorene (FLP) as both a platform for novel 2D physics and an electronic material for semiconductor applications.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

High Performance Field-Effect Transistor Based on Multilayer Tungsten Disulfide

Semiconducting two-dimensional transition metal chalcogenide crystals have been regarded as the promising candidate for the future generation of transistor in modern electronics. However, how to fabricate those crystals into practical devices with acceptable performance still remains as a challenge. Employing tungsten disulfide multilayer thin crystals, we demonstrate that using gold as the only contact metal and choosing appropriate thickness of the crystal, high performance transistor with on/off ratio of $10^{8}$ and mobility up to $234\:cm^{2}V^{-1}s^{-1}$ at room temperature can be realized in a simple device structure. Further low temperature study revealed that the high performance of our device is caused by the minimized Schottky barrier at the contact and the existence of a shallow impurity level around 80 meV right below the conduction band edge. From the analysis on temperature dependence of field-effect mobility, we conclude that strongly suppressed phonon scattering and relatively low charge impurity density are the key factors leading to the high mobility of our tungsten disulfide devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2011

Location Cheating: A Security Challenge to Location-based Social Network Services

Location-based mobile social network services such as foursquare and Gowalla have grown exponentially over the past several years. These location-based services utilize the geographical position to enrich user experiences in a variety of contexts, including location-based searching and location-based mobile advertising. To attract more users, the location-based mobile social network services provide real-world rewards to the user, when a user checks in at a certain venue or location. This gives incentives for users to cheat on their locations. In this report, we investigate the threat of location cheating attacks, find the root cause of the vulnerability, and outline the possible defending mechanisms. We use foursquare as an example to introduce a novel location cheating attack, which can easily pass the current location verification mechanism (e.g., cheater code of foursquare). We also crawl the foursquare website. By analyzing the crawled data, we show that automated large scale cheating is possible. Through this work, we aim to call attention to location cheating in mobile social network services and provide insights into the defending mechanisms.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2011

SafeVchat: Detecting Obscene Content and Misbehaving Users in Online Video Chat Services

Online video chat services such as Chatroulette, Omegle, and vChatter that randomly match pairs of users in video chat sessions are fast becoming very popular, with over a million users per month in the case of Chatroulette. A key problem encountered in such systems is the presence of flashers and obscene content. This problem is especially acute given the presence of underage minors in such systems. This paper presents SafeVchat, a novel solution to the problem of flasher detection that employs an array of image detection algorithms. A key contribution of the paper concerns how the results of the individual detectors are fused together into an overall decision classifying the user as misbehaving or not, based on Dempster-Shafer Theory. The paper introduces a novel, motion-based skin detection method that achieves significantly higher recall and better precision. The proposed methods have been evaluated over real world data and image traces obtained from Chatroulette.com.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2010

Pulse delay via tunable white light cavities using fiber optic resonators

Previously, we proposed a data buffering system that makes use of a pair of white light cavities. For application to telecommunication systems, it would be convenient to realize such a device using fiber optic resonators. In this paper, we present the design of such a system, where the white light cavity effect is produced by using stimulated Brillouin scattering. The system consists of a pair of fiber optic white light cavities placed in series. As in the original proposal, the delay time can be controlled independently of the bandwidth of the data pulses. Furthermore, we show how the bandwidth of the system can be made as large as several times the Brillouin frequency shift. We also show that the net delay achievable in such a buffer can be significantly larger than what can be achieved using a conventional recirculating loop buffer.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2010

Intrusions into Privacy in Video Chat Environments: Attacks and Countermeasures

Video chat systems such as Chatroulette have become increasingly popular as a way to meet and converse one-on-one via video and audio with other users online in an open and interactive manner. At the same time, security and privacy concerns inherent in such communication have been little explored. This paper presents one of the first investigations of the privacy threats found in such video chat systems, identifying three such threats, namely de-anonymization attacks, phishing attacks, and man-in-the-middle attacks. The paper further describes countermeasures against each of these attacks.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2010

Complete Two-dimensional Muellermetric Imaging of Biological Tissue Using Heterodyned Optical Coherence Tomography

A polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography system based on heterodyning and filtering techniques is built to perform Stokesmetric imaging of different layers of depths in a porcine tendon sample. The complete 4\times4 backscattering Muellermetric images of one layer are acquired using such a system. The images reveal information indiscernible from a conventional OCT system.

physics.optics↗