A common way of exposing functionality in contemporary systems is by providing a Web-API based on the REST API architectural guidelines. To describe REST APIs, the industry standard is currently OpenAPI-specifications. Test generation and fuzzing methods targeting OpenAPI-described REST APIs have been a very active research area in recent years. An open research challenge is to aid users in better understanding their API, in addition to finding faults and to cover all the code. In this paper, we address this challenge by proposing a set of behavioural properties, common to REST APIs, which are used to generate examples of behaviours that these APIs exhibit. These examples can be used both (i) to further the understanding of the API and (ii) as a source of automatic test cases. Our evaluation shows that our approach can generate examples deemed relevant for understanding the system and for a source of test generation by practitioners. In addition, we show that basing test generation on behavioural properties provides tests that are less dependent on the state of the system, while at the same time yielding a similar code coverage as state-of-the-art methods in REST API fuzzing in a given time limit.
Quantum Relative Entropy (QRE) programming is a recently popular and challenging class of convex optimization problems with significant applications in quantum computing and quantum information theory. We are interested in modern interior point (IP) methods based on optimal self-concordant barriers for the QRE cone. A range of theoretical and numerical challenges associated with such barrier functions and the QRE cones have hindered the scalability of IP methods. To address these challenges, we propose a series of numerical and linear algebraic techniques and heuristics aimed at enhancing the efficiency of gradient and Hessian computations for the self-concordant barrier function, solving linear systems, and performing matrix-vector products. We also introduce and deliberate about some interesting concepts related to QRE such as symmetric quantum relative entropy (SQRE). We also introduce a two-phase method for performing facial reduction that can significantly improve the performance of QRE programming. Our new techniques have been implemented in the latest version (DDS 2.2) of the software package DDS. In addition to handling QRE constraints, DDS accepts any combination of several other conic and non-conic convex constraints. Our comprehensive numerical experiments encompass several parts including 1) a comparison of DDS 2.2 with Hypatia for the nearest correlation matrix problem, 2) using DDS for combining QRE constraints with various other constraint types, and 3) calculating the key rate for quantum key distribution (QKD) channels and presenting results for several QKD protocols.
Taking a discrete approach to functions and dynamical systems, this paper integrates the combinatorial gradients in Forman's discrete Morse theory with persistent homology to forge a unified approach to function simplification. The two crucial ingredients in this effort are the Lefschetz complex, which focuses on the homology at the expense of the geometry of the cells, and the shallow pairs, which are birth-death pairs that can double as vectors in discrete Morse theory. The main new concept is the depth poset on the birth-death pairs, which captures all simplifications achieved through canceling shallow pairs. One of its linear extensions is the ordering by persistence.
Morphing quadrotors with four external actuators can adapt to different restricted scenarios by changing their geometric structure. However, previous works mainly focus on the improvements in structures and controllers, and existing planning algorithms don't consider the morphological modifications, which leads to safety and dynamic feasibility issues. In this paper, we propose a unified planning and control framework for morphing quadrotors to deform autonomously and efficiently. The framework consists of a milliseconds-level spatial-temporal trajectory optimizer that takes into account the morphological modifications of quadrotors. The optimizer can generate full-body safety trajectories including position and attitude. Additionally, it incorporates a nonlinear attitude controller that accounts for aerodynamic drag and dynamically adjusts dynamic parameters such as the inertia tensor and Center of Gravity. The controller can also online compute the thrust coefficient during morphing. Benchmark experiments compared with existing methods validate the robustness of the proposed controller. Extensive simulations and real-world experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
We propose a novel data-driven approach to allocate transmit power for federated learning (FL) over interference-limited wireless networks. The proposed method is useful in challenging scenarios where the wireless channel is changing during the FL training process and when the training data are not independent and identically distributed (non-i.i.d.) on the local devices. Intuitively, the power policy is designed to optimize the information received at the server end during the FL process under communication constraints. Ultimately, our goal is to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the global FL model being trained. The proposed power allocation policy is parameterized using graph convolutional networks (GCNs), and the associated constrained optimization problem is solved through a primal-dual (PD) algorithm. Theoretically, we show that the formulated problem has a zero duality gap and, once the power policy is parameterized, optimality depends on how expressive this parameterization is. Numerically, we demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing baselines under different wireless channel settings and varying degrees of data heterogeneity.
The purpose of this work is to present an effective tool for computing different QR-decompositions of a complex nonsingular square matrix. The concept of the discrete signal-induced heap transform (DsiHT, Grigoryan 2006) is used. This transform is fast, has a unique algorithm for any length of the input vector/signal and can be used with different complex basic 2x2 transforms. The DsiHT zeroes all components of the input signal while moving or heaping the energy of the signal into one component, such as the first. We describe three different types of QR-decompositions that use the basic transforms with the T, G, and M-type complex matrices we introduce, and also without matrices, but using analytical formulas. We also present the mixed QR-decomposition, when different type DsiHTs are used at different stages of the algorithm. The number of such decompositions is greater than 3^((N-1)), for an NxN complex matrix. Examples of the QR-decomposition are described in detail for the 4x4 and 6x6 complex matrices and compared with the known method of Householder transforms. The precision of the QR-decompositions of NxN matrices, when N are 6, 13, 17, 19, 21, 40, 64, 100, 128, 201, 256, and 400 is also compared. The MATLAB-based scripts of the codes for QR-decompositions by the described DsiHTs are given.
Performance analysis is an essential task in High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems and it is applied for different purposes such as anomaly detection, optimal resource allocation, and budget planning. HPC monitoring tasks generate a huge number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to supervise the status of the jobs running in these systems. KPIs give data about CPU usage, memory usage, network (interface) traffic, or other sensors that monitor the hardware. Analyzing this data, it is possible to obtain insightful information about running jobs, such as their characteristics, performance, and failures. The main contribution in this paper is to identify which metric/s (KPIs) is/are the most appropriate to identify/classify different types of jobs according to their behavior in the HPC system. With this aim, we have applied different clustering techniques (partition and hierarchical clustering algorithms) using a real dataset from the Galician Computation Center (CESGA). We have concluded that (i) those metrics (KPIs) related to the Network (interface) traffic monitoring provide the best cohesion and separation to cluster HPC jobs, and (ii) hierarchical clustering algorithms are the most suitable for this task. Our approach was validated using a different real dataset from the same HPC center.
The growing presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in various sectors necessitates systems that accurately reflect societal diversity. This study seeks to envision the operationalization of the ethical imperatives of diversity and inclusion (D&I) within AI ecosystems, addressing the current disconnect between ethical guidelines and their practical implementation. A significant challenge in AI development is the effective operationalization of D&I principles, which is critical to prevent the reinforcement of existing biases and ensure equity across AI applications. This paper proposes a vision of a framework for developing a tool utilizing persona-based simulation by Generative AI (GenAI). The approach aims to facilitate the representation of the needs of diverse users in the requirements analysis process for AI software. The proposed framework is expected to lead to a comprehensive persona repository with diverse attributes that inform the development process with detailed user narratives. This research contributes to the development of an inclusive AI paradigm that ensures future technological advances are designed with a commitment to the diverse fabric of humanity.
One of the motivations for explainable AI is to allow humans to make better and more informed decisions regarding the use and deployment of AI models. But careful evaluations are needed to assess whether this expectation has been fulfilled. Current evaluations mainly focus on algorithmic properties of explanations, and those that involve human subjects often employ subjective questions to test human's perception of explanation usefulness, without being grounded in objective metrics and measurements. In this work, we evaluate whether explanations can improve human decision-making in practical scenarios of machine learning model development. We conduct a mixed-methods user study involving image data to evaluate saliency maps generated by SmoothGrad, GradCAM, and an oracle explanation on two tasks: model selection and counterfactual simulation. To our surprise, we did not find evidence of significant improvement on these tasks when users were provided with any of the saliency maps, even the synthetic oracle explanation designed to be simple to understand and highly indicative of the answer. Nonetheless, explanations did help users more accurately describe the models. These findings suggest caution regarding the usefulness and potential for misunderstanding in saliency-based explanations.
Fractional programming (FP) plays an important role in information science because of the Cramer-Rao bound,the Fisher information, and the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). A state-of-the-art method called the quadratic transform has been extensively used to address the FP problems. This work aims to accelerate the quadratic transform-based iterative optimization via gradient projection and extrapolation. The main contributions of this work are three-fold. First, we relate the quadratic transform to the gradient projection, thereby eliminating the matrix inverse operation from the iterative optimization; our result generalizes the weighted sum-of-rates (WSR) maximization algorithm in [1] to a wide range of FP problems. Second, based on this connection to gradient projection, we incorporate Nesterov's extrapolation strategy [2] into the quadratic transform so as to accelerate the convergence of the iterative optimization. Third, from a minorization-maximization (MM) point of view, we examine the convergence rates of the conventional quadratic transform methods--which include the weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE) algorithm as a special case--and the proposed accelerated ones. Moreover, we illustrate the practical use of the accelerated quadratic transform in two popular application cases of future wireless networks: (i) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) and (ii) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO).
This study presents a formulation of the Superposition Theorem (ST) in the spectrum space, tailored for the analysis of composite events in an active distribution network (ADN). Our formulated ST enables a quantitative analysis on a composite event, uncovering the property of additivity among independent atom events in the spectrum space. This contribution is a significant addition to the existing literature and has profound implications in various application scenarios. To accomplish this, we leverage random matrix theory (RMT), specifically the asymptotic empirical spectral distribution, Stieltjes transform, and R transform. These mathematical tools establish a nonlinear, model-free, and unsupervised addition operation in the spectrum space. Comprehensive details, including a related roadmap,theorems, deductions, and proofs, are provided in this work. Case studies, utilizing field data, validate our newly derived ST formulation by demonstrating a remarkable performance. Our ST formulation is model-free, non-linear, non-supervised, theory-guided, and uncertainty-insensitive, making it a valuable asset in the realm of composite event analysis in ADN.