arXiv subjects

Zhi Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Zhi Liu.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Implications of the virus-encoded miRNA and host miRNA in the pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2

The outbreak of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 has rapidly spread worldwide and has caused over 1,400,000 infections and 80,000 deaths. There are currently no drugs or vaccines with proven efficacy for its prevention and little knowledge was known about the pathogenicity mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Previous studies showed both virus and host-derived MicroRNAs (miRNAs) played crucial roles in the pathology of virus infection. In this study, we use computational approaches to scan the SARS-CoV-2 genome for putative miRNAs and predict the virus miRNA targets on virus and human genome as well as the host miRNAs targets on virus genome. Furthermore, we explore miRNAs involved dysregulation caused by the virus infection. Our results implicated that the immune response and cytoskeleton organization are two of the most notable biological processes regulated by the infection-modulated miRNAs. Impressively, we found hsa-miR-4661-3p was predicted to target the S gene of SARS-CoV-2, and a virus-encoded miRNA MR147-3p could enhance the expression of TMPRSS2 with the function of strengthening SARS-CoV-2 infection in the gut. The study may provide important clues for the mechisms of pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2.

q-bio.GN↗

arXiv2020

BeSense: Leveraging WiFi Channel Data and Computational Intelligence for Behavior Analysis

The ever evolving informatics technology has gradually bounded human and computer in a compact way. Understanding user behavior becomes a key enabler in many fields such as sedentary-related healthcare, human-computer interaction (HCI) and affective computing. Traditional sensor-based and vision-based user behavior analysis approaches are obtrusive in general, hindering their usage in realworld. Therefore, in this article, we first introduce WiFi signal as a new source instead of sensor and vision for unobtrusive user behaviors analysis. Then we design BeSense, a contactless behavior analysis system leveraging signal processing and computational intelligence over WiFi channel state information (CSI). We prototype BeSense on commodity low-cost WiFi devices and evaluate its performance in realworld environments. Experimental results have verified its effectiveness in recognizing user behaviors.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2020

Joint Communication and Computational Resource Allocation for QoE-driven Point Cloud Video Streaming

Point cloud video is the most popular representation of hologram, which is the medium to precedent natural content in VR/AR/MR and is expected to be the next generation video. Point cloud video system provides users immersive viewing experience with six degrees of freedom and has wide applications in many fields such as online education, entertainment. To further enhance these applications, point cloud video streaming is in critical demand. The inherent challenges lie in the large size by the necessity of recording the three-dimensional coordinates besides color information, and the associated high computation complexity of encoding. To this end, this paper proposes a communication and computation resource allocation scheme for QoE-driven point cloud video streaming. In particular, we maximize system resource utilization by selecting different quantities, transmission forms and quality level tiles to maximize the quality of experience. Extensive simulations are conducted and the simulation results show the superior performance over the existing schemes

cs.MM↗

arXiv2020

Dual Convolutional LSTM Network for Referring Image Segmentation

We consider referring image segmentation. It is a problem at the intersection of computer vision and natural language understanding. Given an input image and a referring expression in the form of a natural language sentence, the goal is to segment the object of interest in the image referred by the linguistic query. To this end, we propose a dual convolutional LSTM (ConvLSTM) network to tackle this problem. Our model consists of an encoder network and a decoder network, where ConvLSTM is used in both encoder and decoder networks to capture spatial and sequential information. The encoder network extracts visual and linguistic features for each word in the expression sentence, and adopts an attention mechanism to focus on words that are more informative in the multimodal interaction. The decoder network integrates the features generated by the encoder network at multiple levels as its input and produces the final precise segmentation mask. Experimental results on four challenging datasets demonstrate that the proposed network achieves superior segmentation performance compared with other state-of-the-art methods.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2020

QoE-driven Coupled Uplink and Downlink Rate Adaptation for 360-degree Video Live Streaming

360-degree video provides an immersive 360-degree viewing experience and has been widely used in many areas. The 360-degree video live streaming systems involve capturing, compression, uplink (camera to video server) and downlink (video server to user) transmissions. However, few studies have jointly investigated such complex systems, especially the rate adaptation for the coupled uplink and downlink in the 360-degree video streaming under limited bandwidth constraints. In this letter, we propose a quality of experience (QoE)-driven 360-degree video live streaming system, in which a video server performs rate adaptation based on the uplink and downlink bandwidths and information concerning each user's real-time field-of-view (FOV). We formulate it as a nonlinear integer programming problem and propose an algorithm, which combines the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) condition and branch and bound method, to solve it. The numerical results show that the proposed optimization model can improve users' QoE significantly in comparison with other baseline schemes.

cs.MM↗

arXiv2020

Optimal Transmission of Multi-Quality Tiled 360 VR Video by Exploiting Multicast Opportunities

In this paper, we would like to investigate fundamental impacts of multicast opportunities on efficient transmission of a 360 VR video to multiple users in the cases with and without transcoding at each user. We establish a novel mathematical model that reflects the impacts of multicast opportunities on the average transmission energy in both cases and the transcoding energy in the case with user transcoding, and facilitates the optimal exploitation of transcoding-enabled multicast opportunities. In the case without user transcoding, we optimize the transmission resource allocation to minimize the average transmission energy by exploiting natural multicast opportunities. The problem is nonconvex. We transform it to an equivalent convex problem and obtain an optimal solution using standard convex optimization techniques. In the case with user transcoding, we optimize the transmission resource allocation and the transmission quality level selection to minimize the weighted sum of the average transmission energy and the transcoding energy by exploiting both natural and transcoding-enabled multicast opportunities. The problem is a challenging mixed discrete-continuous optimization problem. We transform it to a Difference of Convex (DC) programming problem and obtain a suboptimal solution using a DC algorithm. Finally, numerical results demonstrate the importance of effective exploitation of transcoding-enabled multicast opportunities in the case with user transcoding.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Optimal Multi-View Video Transmission in Multiuser Wireless Networks by Exploiting Natural and View Synthesis-Enabled Multicast Opportunities

Multi-view videos (MVVs) provide immersive viewing experience, at the cost of traffic load increase for wireless networks. In this paper, we would like to optimize MVV transmission in a multiuser wireless network by exploiting both natural multicast opportunities and view synthesis-enabled multicast opportunities. Specifically, we first establish a mathematical model to specify view synthesis at the server and each user, and characterize its impact on multicast opportunities. This model is highly nontrivial and fundamentally enables the optimization of view synthesis-based multicast opportunities. For given video quality requirements of all users, we consider the optimization of view selection, transmission time and power allocation to minimize the average weighted sum energy consumption for view transmission and synthesis. In addition, under the energy consumption constraints at the server and each user respectively, we consider the optimization of view selection, transmission time and power allocation and video quality selection to maximize the total utility. These two optimization problems are challenging mixed discrete-continuous optimization problems. For the first problem, we propose an algorithm to obtain an optimal solution with reduced computational complexity by exploiting optimality properties. For each problem, to reduce computational complexity, we also propose a low-complexity algorithm to obtain a suboptimal solution, using Difference of Convex (DC) programming. Finally, numerical results show the advantage of the proposed solutions over existing ones, and demonstrate the importance of the optimization of view synthesis-enabled multicast opportunities in MVV transmission.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Optimal Multi-View Video Transmission in OFDMA Systems

In this letter, we study the transmission of a multi-view video (MVV) to multiple users in an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) system. To maximally improve transmission efficiency, we exploit both natural multicast opportunities and view synthesis-enabled multicast opportunities. First, we establish a communication model for transmission of a MVV to multiple users in an OFDMA system. Then, we formulate the minimization problem of the average weighted sum energy consumption for view transmission and synthesis with respect to view selection and transmission power and subcarrier allocation. The optimization problem is a challenging mixed discrete-continuous optimization problem with huge numbers of variables and constraints. A low-complexity algorithm is proposed to obtain a suboptimal solution. Finally, numerical results further demonstrate the value of view synthesis-enabled multicast opportunities for MVV transmission in OFDMA systems.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Elastic deep learning in multi-tenant GPU cluster

We study how to support elasticity, i.e., the ability to dynamically adjust the parallelism (number of GPUs), for deep neural network (DNN) training. Elasticity can benefit multi-tenant GPU cluster management in many ways, e.g., achieving various scheduling objectives (e.g., job throughput, job completion time, GPU efficiency) according to cluster load variations, maximizing the use of transient idle resources, performance profiling, job migration, and straggler mitigation. However, existing parallelism adjustment strategies incur high overheads, which hinder many applications from making effective use of elasticity. We propose EDL to enable low-overhead elastic deep learning with a simple API. We present techniques that are necessary to reduce the overhead of parallelism adjustments, such as stop-free scaling and dynamic data pipeline. We also demonstrate that EDL can indeed bring significant benefits to the above-listed applications in GPU cluster management.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2019

Age of Information-Aware Radio Resource Management in Vehicular Networks: A Proactive Deep Reinforcement Learning Perspective

In this paper, we investigate the problem of age of information (AoI)-aware radio resource management for expected long-term performance optimization in a Manhattan grid vehicle-to-vehicle network. With the observation of global network state at each scheduling slot, the roadside unit (RSU) allocates the frequency bands and schedules packet transmissions for all vehicle user equipment-pairs (VUE-pairs). We model the stochastic decision-making procedure as a discrete-time single-agent Markov decision process (MDP). The technical challenges in solving the optimal control policy originate from high spatial mobility and temporally varying traffic information arrivals of the VUE-pairs. To make the problem solving tractable, we first decompose the original MDP into a series of per-VUE-pair MDPs. Then we propose a proactive algorithm based on long short-term memory and deep reinforcement learning techniques to address the partial observability and the curse of high dimensionality in local network state space faced by each VUE-pair. With the proposed algorithm, the RSU makes the optimal frequency band allocation and packet scheduling decision at each scheduling slot in a decentralized way in accordance with the partial observations of the global network state at the VUE-pairs. Numerical experiments validate the theoretical analysis and demonstrate the significant performance improvements from the proposed algorithm.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2019

AF-DCGAN: Amplitude Feature Deep Convolutional GAN for Fingerprint Construction in Indoor Localization Systems

With widely deployed WiFi network and the uniqueness feature (fingerprint) of wireless channel information, fingerprinting based WiFi positioning is currently the mainstream indoor positioning method, in which fingerprint database construction is crucial. However, for accuracy, this approach requires enough data to be sampled at many reference points, which consumes excessive efforts and time. In this paper, we collect Channel State Information (CSI) data at reference points by the method of device-free localization, then we convert collected CSI data into amplitude feature maps and extend the fingerprint database using the proposed Amplitude-Feature Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (AF-DCGAN) model. The use of AF-DCGAN accelerates convergence during the training phase, and substantially increases the diversity of the CSI amplitude feature map. The extended fingerprint database both reduces the human effort involved in fingerprint database construction and the accuracy of an indoor localization system, as demonstrated in the experiments.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2019

EmoSense: Computational Intelligence Driven Emotion Sensing via Wireless Channel Data

Emotion is well-recognized as a distinguished symbol of human beings, and it plays a crucial role in our daily lives. Existing vision-based or sensor-based solutions are either obstructive to use or rely on specialized hardware, hindering their applicability. This paper introduces EmoSense, a first-of-its-kind wireless emotion sensing system driven by computational intelligence. The basic methodology is to explore the physical expression of emotions from wireless channel response via data mining. The design and implementation of EmoSense {face} two major challenges: extracting physical expression from wireless channel data and recovering emotion from the corresponding physical expression. For the former, we present a Fresnel zone based theoretical model depicting the fingerprint of the physical expression on channel response. For the latter, we design an efficient computational intelligence driven mechanism to recognize emotion from the corresponding fingerprints. We prototyped EmoSense on the commodity WiFi infrastructure and compared it with main-stream sensor-based and vision-based approaches in the real-world scenario. The numerical study over $3360$ cases confirms that EmoSense achieves a comparable performance to the vision-based and sensor-based rivals under different scenarios. EmoSense only leverages the low-cost and prevalent WiFi infrastructures and thus constitutes a tempting solution for emotion sensing.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2019

WiFi-based Real-time Breathing and Heart Rate Monitoring during Sleep

Good quality sleep is essential for good health and sleep monitoring becomes a vital research topic. This paper provides a low cost, continuous and contactless WiFi-based vital signs (breathing and heart rate) monitoring method. In particular, we set up the antennas based on Fresnel diffraction model and signal propagation theory, which enhances the detection of weak breathing/heartbeat motion. We implement a prototype system using the off-shelf devices and a real-time processing system to monitor vital signs in real time. The experimental results indicate the accurate breathing rate and heart rate detection performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to use a pair of WiFi devices and omnidirectional antennas to achieve real-time individual breathing rate and heart rate monitoring in different sleeping postures.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2019

SleepGuardian: An RF-based Healthcare System Guarding Your Sleep from Afar

The ever accelerating process of urbanization urges more and more population into the swelling cities. While city residents are enjoying an entertaining life supported by advanced informatics techniques like 5G and cloud computing, the same technologies have also gradually deprived their sleep, which is crucial for their wellness. Therefore, sleep monitoring has drawn significant attention from both research and industry communities. In this article, we first review the sleep monitoring issue and point out three essential properties of an ideal sleep healthcare system, i.e., realtime guarding, fine-grained logging, and cost-effectiveness. Based on the analysis, we present SleepGuardian, a Radio Frequence (RF) based sleep healthcare system leveraging signal processing, edge computing and machine learning.SleepGuardian offers an offline sleep logging service and an online abnormality warning service. The offline service provides a fine-grained sleep log like timing and regularity of bed time, onset of sleep and night time awakenings. The online service keeps guarding the subject for any abnormal behaviors during sleep like intensive body twitches and a sudden seizure attack. Once an abnormality happens,it will automatically warn the designated contacts like a nearby emergency room or a closeby relative.We prototype SleepGuardian with low-cost WiFi devices and evaluate it in real scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that SleepGuardian is very effective.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2019

Deep Saliency Models : The Quest For The Loss Function

Recent advances in deep learning have pushed the performances of visual saliency models way further than it has ever been. Numerous models in the literature present new ways to design neural networks, to arrange gaze pattern data, or to extract as much high and low-level image features as possible in order to create the best saliency representation. However, one key part of a typical deep learning model is often neglected: the choice of the loss function. In this work, we explore some of the most popular loss functions that are used in deep saliency models. We demonstrate that on a fixed network architecture, modifying the loss function can significantly improve (or depreciate) the results, hence emphasizing the importance of the choice of the loss function when designing a model. We also introduce new loss functions that have never been used for saliency prediction to our knowledge. And finally, we show that a linear combination of several well-chosen loss functions leads to significant improvements in performances on different datasets as well as on a different network architecture, hence demonstrating the robustness of a combined metric.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2019

Visualizing Exotic Orbital Texture in the Single-Layer Mott Insulator 1T-TaSe2

Mott insulating behavior is induced by strong electron correlation and can lead to exotic states of matter such as unconventional superconductivity and quantum spin liquids. Recent advances in van der Waals material synthesis enable the exploration of novel Mott systems in the two-dimensional limit. Here we report characterization of the local electronic properties of single- and few-layer 1T-TaSe2 via spatial- and momentum-resolved spectroscopy involving scanning tunneling microscopy and angle-resolved photoemission. Our combined experimental and theoretical study indicates that electron correlation induces a robust Mott insulator state in single-layer 1T-TaSe2 that is accompanied by novel orbital texture. Inclusion of interlayer coupling weakens the insulating phase in 1T-TaSe2, as seen by strong reduction of its energy gap and quenching of its correlation-driven orbital texture in bilayer and trilayer 1T-TaSe2. Our results establish single-layer 1T-TaSe2 as a useful new platform for investigating strong correlation physics in two dimensions.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Compare Contact Model-based Control and Contact Model-free Learning: A Survey of Robotic Peg-in-hole Assembly Strategies

In this paper, we present an overview of robotic peg-in-hole assembly and analyze two main strategies: contact model-based and contact model-free strategies. More specifically, we first introduce the contact model control approaches, including contact state recognition and compliant control two steps. Additionally, we focus on a comprehensive analysis of the whole robotic assembly system. Second, without the contact state recognition process, we decompose the contact model-free learning algorithms into two main subfields: learning from demonstrations and learning from environments (mainly based on reinforcement learning). For each subfield, we survey the landmark studies and ongoing research to compare the different categories. We hope to strengthen the relation between these two research communities by revealing the underlying links. Ultimately, the remaining challenges and open questions in the field of robotic peg-in-hole assembly community is discussed. The promising directions and potential future work are also considered.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2019

Cross-Modal Self-Attention Network for Referring Image Segmentation

We consider the problem of referring image segmentation. Given an input image and a natural language expression, the goal is to segment the object referred by the language expression in the image. Existing works in this area treat the language expression and the input image separately in their representations. They do not sufficiently capture long-range correlations between these two modalities. In this paper, we propose a cross-modal self-attention (CMSA) module that effectively captures the long-range dependencies between linguistic and visual features. Our model can adaptively focus on informative words in the referring expression and important regions in the input image. In addition, we propose a gated multi-level fusion module to selectively integrate self-attentive cross-modal features corresponding to different levels in the image. This module controls the information flow of features at different levels. We validate the proposed approach on four evaluation datasets. Our proposed approach consistently outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods.

cs.CV↗