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Fan Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Fan Zhang.

At least 487 records · Page 27Linked to original sources

Black-Box Opinion Manipulation Attacks to Retrieval-Augmented Generation of Large Language Models

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is applied to solve hallucination problems and real-time constraints of large language models, but it also induces vulnerabilities against retrieval corruption attacks. Existing research mainly explores the unreliability of RAG in white-box and closed-domain QA tasks. In this paper, we aim to reveal the vulnerabilities of Retrieval-Enhanced Generative (RAG) models when faced with black-box attacks for opinion manipulation. We explore the impact of such attacks on user cognition and decision-making, providing new insight to enhance the reliability and security of RAG models. We manipulate the ranking results of the retrieval model in RAG with instruction and use these results as data to train a surrogate model. By employing adversarial retrieval attack methods to the surrogate model, black-box transfer attacks on RAG are further realized. Experiments conducted on opinion datasets across multiple topics show that the proposed attack strategy can significantly alter the opinion polarity of the content generated by RAG. This demonstrates the model's vulnerability and, more importantly, reveals the potential negative impact on user cognition and decision-making, making it easier to mislead users into accepting incorrect or biased information.

cs.CL↗

Marlin: Knowledge-Driven Analysis of Provenance Graphs for Efficient and Robust Detection of Cyber Attacks

Recent research in both academia and industry has validated the effectiveness of provenance graph-based detection for advanced cyber attack detection and investigation. However, analyzing large-scale provenance graphs often results in substantial overhead. To improve performance, existing detection systems implement various optimization strategies. Yet, as several recent studies suggest, these strategies could lose necessary context information and be vulnerable to evasions. Designing a detection system that is efficient and robust against adversarial attacks is an open problem. We introduce Marlin, which approaches cyber attack detection through real-time provenance graph alignment.By leveraging query graphs embedded with attack knowledge, Marlin can efficiently identify entities and events within provenance graphs, embedding targeted analysis and significantly narrowing the search space. Moreover, we incorporate our graph alignment algorithm into a tag propagation-based schema to eliminate the need for storing and reprocessing raw logs. This design significantly reduces in-memory storage requirements and minimizes data processing overhead. As a result, it enables real-time graph alignment while preserving essential context information, thereby enhancing the robustness of cyber attack detection. Moreover, Marlin allows analysts to customize attack query graphs flexibly to detect extended attacks and provide interpretable detection results. We conduct experimental evaluations on two large-scale public datasets containing 257.42 GB of logs and 12 query graphs of varying sizes, covering multiple attack techniques and scenarios. The results show that Marlin can process 137K events per second while accurately identifying 120 subgraphs with 31 confirmed attacks, along with only 1 false positive, demonstrating its efficiency and accuracy in handling massive data.

cs.CR↗

First-order Néel-VBS transition in $S=3/2$ antiferromagnets

We study the transition between Néel and columnar valence-bond solid ordering in two-dimensional $S=3/2$ square lattice quantum antiferromagnets with SO(3) symmetry. According to the deconfined criticality scenario, this transition can be direct and continuous like the well-studied $S=1/2$ case. To study the global phase diagram, we work with four multi-spin couplings with full rotational symmetry, that are free of the sign-problem of quantum Monte Carlo. Exploring the phase diagram with quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the phase transition between Néel and valence-bond solid is strongly first-order in the parts of the phase diagram that we have accessed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

Constraining the stochastic gravitational wave background using the future lunar seismometers

Motivated by the old idea of using the moon as a resonant gravitational-wave (GW) detector, as well as the recent updates in modeling the lunar response to GWs, we re-evaluate the feasibility of using a network of lunar seismometers to constrain the stochastic GW background (SGWB). In particular, using the updated model of the lunar response, we derive the pattern functions for the two polarizations of GW. With these pattern functions, we further calculate the overlap reduction functions for a network of lunar seismometers, where we have relaxed the conventional assumption that lunar seismometers are perfectly leveled to measure only the vertical acceleration. We apply our calculation to two future lunar projects, namely, Chang'e and the Lunar Gravitational-Wave Antenna (LGWA). We find that the two projects could constrain the SGWB to a level of $Ω_{\text{GW}}^{\text{Chang'e}} < 2.4 \times 10^{2}$ and $Ω_{\text{GW}}^{\text{LGWA}} < 2.0 \times 10^{-10}$, respectively, which corresponds to a signal-to-noise ratio of SNR $=3$. These results are better than the constraints placed previously on the SGWB in the mid-frequency band (around $10^{-3}- 10~\text{Hz}$) by various types of experiments.

gr-qc↗

Planning with Logical Graph-based Language Model for Instruction Generation

Despite the superior performance of large language models to generate natural language texts, it is hard to generate texts with correct logic according to a given task, due to the difficulties for neural models to capture implied rules from free-form texts. In this paper, we propose a novel graph-based language model, Logical-GLM, to infuse logic into language models for more valid text generation and interpretability. Specifically, we first capture information from natural language instructions and construct logical bayes graphs that generally describe domains. Next, we generate logical skeletons to guide language model training, infusing domain knowledge into language models. Finally, we alternately optimize the searching policy of graphs and language models until convergence. The experimental results show that Logical-GLM is both effective and efficient compared with traditional language models, despite using smaller-scale training data and fewer parameters. Our approach can generate instructional texts with more correct logic owing to the internalized domain knowledge. Moreover, the usage of logical graphs reflects the inner mechanism of the language models, which improves the interpretability of black-box models.

cs.CL↗

Line Drawing Guided Progressive Inpainting of Mural Damage

Mural image inpainting is far less explored compared to its natural image counterpart and remains largely unsolved. Most existing image-inpainting methods tend to take the target image as the only input and directly repair the damage to generate a visually plausible result. These methods obtain high performance in restoration or completion of some pre-defined objects, e.g., human face, fabric texture, and printed texts, etc., however, are not suitable for repairing murals with varying subjects and large damaged areas. Moreover, due to discrete colors in paints, mural inpainting may suffer from apparent color bias. To this end, in this paper, we propose a line drawing guided progressive mural inpainting method. It divides the inpainting process into two steps: structure reconstruction and color correction, implemented by a structure reconstruction network (SRN) and a color correction network (CCN), respectively. In structure reconstruction, SRN utilizes the line drawing as an assistant to achieve large-scale content authenticity and structural stability. In color correction, CCN operates a local color adjustment for missing pixels which reduces the negative effects of color bias and edge jumping. The proposed approach is evaluated against the current state-of-the-art image inpainting methods. Qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in mural image inpainting. The codes and data are available at https://github.com/qinnzou/mural-image-inpainting.

cs.CV↗

Protecting the 'Stop Using My Data' Right through Blockchain-assisted Evidence Generation

In order to provide personalized services to users, Internet-based platforms collect and utilize user-generated behavioral data. Although the 'stop using my data' right should be a fundamental data right, which allows individuals to request their personal data to be no longer utilized by online platforms, the existing preventive data protection measures (e.g., cryptographic data elimination, differential privacy) are unfortunately not applicable. This work aims to develop the first Evidence Generation Framework for deterring post-acquisition data right violations. We formulated the 'stop using my data' problem, which captures a vantage facet of the multi-faceted notion of 'right to be forgotten'. We designed and implemented the first blockchain-assisted system to generate evidence for deterring the violations of the 'stop using my data' right. Our system employs a novel two-stage evidence generation protocol whose efficacy is ensured by a newly proposed Lemma. To validate our framework, we conducted a case study on recommendation systems with systematic evaluation experiments using two real-world datasets: the measured success rate exceeds 99%.

cs.CR↗

EntropyStop: Unsupervised Deep Outlier Detection with Loss Entropy

Unsupervised Outlier Detection (UOD) is an important data mining task. With the advance of deep learning, deep Outlier Detection (OD) has received broad interest. Most deep UOD models are trained exclusively on clean datasets to learn the distribution of the normal data, which requires huge manual efforts to clean the real-world data if possible. Instead of relying on clean datasets, some approaches directly train and detect on unlabeled contaminated datasets, leading to the need for methods that are robust to such conditions. Ensemble methods emerged as a superior solution to enhance model robustness against contaminated training sets. However, the training time is greatly increased by the ensemble. In this study, we investigate the impact of outliers on the training phase, aiming to halt training on unlabeled contaminated datasets before performance degradation. Initially, we noted that blending normal and anomalous data causes AUC fluctuations, a label-dependent measure of detection accuracy. To circumvent the need for labels, we propose a zero-label entropy metric named Loss Entropy for loss distribution, enabling us to infer optimal stopping points for training without labels. Meanwhile, we theoretically demonstrate negative correlation between entropy metric and the label-based AUC. Based on this, we develop an automated early-stopping algorithm, EntropyStop, which halts training when loss entropy suggests the maximum model detection capability. We conduct extensive experiments on ADBench (including 47 real datasets), and the overall results indicate that AutoEncoder (AE) enhanced by our approach not only achieves better performance than ensemble AEs but also requires under 2\% of training time. Lastly, our proposed metric and early-stopping approach are evaluated on other deep OD models, exhibiting their broad potential applicability.

cs.LG↗

GraphKAN: Enhancing Feature Extraction with Graph Kolmogorov Arnold Networks

Massive number of applications involve data with underlying relationships embedded in non-Euclidean space. Graph neural networks (GNNs) are utilized to extract features by capturing the dependencies within graphs. Despite groundbreaking performances, we argue that Multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) and fixed activation functions impede the feature extraction due to information loss. Inspired by Kolmogorov Arnold Networks (KANs), we make the first attempt to GNNs with KANs. We discard MLPs and activation functions, and instead used KANs for feature extraction. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of GraphKAN, emphasizing the potential of KANs as a powerful tool. Code is available at https://github.com/Ryanfzhang/GraphKan.

cs.LG↗

Mpox-AISM: AI-Mediated Super Monitoring for Mpox and Like-Mpox

Swift and accurate diagnosis for earlier-stage monkeypox (mpox) patients is crucial to avoiding its spread. However, the similarities between common skin disorders and mpox and the need for professional diagnosis unavoidably impaired the diagnosis of earlier-stage mpox patients and contributed to mpox outbreak. To address the challenge, we proposed "Super Monitoring", a real-time visualization technique employing artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet technology to diagnose earlier-stage mpox cheaply, conveniently, and quickly. Concretely, AI-mediated "Super Monitoring" (mpox-AISM) integrates deep learning models, data augmentation, self-supervised learning, and cloud services. According to publicly accessible datasets, mpox-AISM's Precision, Recall, Specificity, and F1-score in diagnosing mpox reach 99.3%, 94.1%, 99.9%, and 96.6%, respectively, and it achieves 94.51% accuracy in diagnosing mpox, six like-mpox skin disorders, and normal skin. With the Internet and communication terminal, mpox-AISM has the potential to perform real-time and accurate diagnosis for earlier-stage mpox in real-world scenarios, thereby preventing mpox outbreak.

eess.IV↗

MINER-RRT*: A Hierarchical and Fast Trajectory Planning Framework in 3D Cluttered Environments

Trajectory planning for quadrotors in cluttered environments has been challenging in recent years. While many trajectory planning frameworks have been successful, there still exists potential for improvements, particularly in enhancing the speed of generating efficient trajectories. In this paper, we present a novel hierarchical trajectory planning framework to reduce computational time and memory usage called MINER-RRT*, which consists of two main components. First, we propose a sampling-based path planning method boosted by neural networks, where the predicted heuristic region accelerates the convergence of rapidly-exploring random trees. Second, we utilize the optimal conditions derived from the quadrotor's differential flatness properties to construct polynomial trajectories that minimize control effort in multiple stages. Extensive simulation and real-world experimental results demonstrate that, compared to several state-of-the-art (SOTA) approaches, our method can generate high-quality trajectories with better performance in 3D cluttered environments.

cs.RO↗

QUADFormer: Learning-based Detection of Cyber Attacks in Quadrotor UAVs

Safety-critical intelligent cyber-physical systems, such as quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are vulnerable to different types of cyber attacks, and the absence of timely and accurate attack detection can lead to severe consequences. When UAVs are engaged in large outdoor maneuvering flights, their system constitutes highly nonlinear dynamics that include non-Gaussian noises. Therefore, the commonly employed traditional statistics-based and emerging learning-based attack detection methods do not yield satisfactory results. In response to the above challenges, we propose QUADFormer, a novel Quadrotor UAV Attack Detection framework with transFormer-based architecture. This framework includes a residue generator designed to generate a residue sequence sensitive to anomalies. Subsequently, this sequence is fed into a transformer structure with disparity in correlation to specifically learn its statistical characteristics for the purpose of classification and attack detection. Finally, we design an alert module to ensure the safe execution of tasks by UAVs under attack conditions. We conduct extensive simulations and real-world experiments, and the results show that our method has achieved superior detection performance compared with many state-of-the-art methods.

cs.RO↗

Introducing HOT3D: An Egocentric Dataset for 3D Hand and Object Tracking

We introduce HOT3D, a publicly available dataset for egocentric hand and object tracking in 3D. The dataset offers over 833 minutes (more than 3.7M images) of multi-view RGB/monochrome image streams showing 19 subjects interacting with 33 diverse rigid objects, multi-modal signals such as eye gaze or scene point clouds, as well as comprehensive ground truth annotations including 3D poses of objects, hands, and cameras, and 3D models of hands and objects. In addition to simple pick-up/observe/put-down actions, HOT3D contains scenarios resembling typical actions in a kitchen, office, and living room environment. The dataset is recorded by two head-mounted devices from Meta: Project Aria, a research prototype of light-weight AR/AI glasses, and Quest 3, a production VR headset sold in millions of units. Ground-truth poses were obtained by a professional motion-capture system using small optical markers attached to hands and objects. Hand annotations are provided in the UmeTrack and MANO formats and objects are represented by 3D meshes with PBR materials obtained by an in-house scanner. We aim to accelerate research on egocentric hand-object interaction by making the HOT3D dataset publicly available and by co-organizing public challenges on the dataset at ECCV 2024. The dataset can be downloaded from the project website: https://facebookresearch.github.io/hot3d/.

cs.CV↗

Quantum Noise of Kramers-Kronig Receiver

The Kramers-Kronig (KK) receiver provides an efficient method to reconstruct the complex-valued optical field by means of intensity detection given a minimum-phase signal. In this paper, we analytically show that for detecting coherent states through measuring the minimum-phase signal, while keeping the radial quantum fluctuation the same as the balanced heterodyne detection does, the KK receiver can indirectly recover the tangential component with fluctuation equivalently reduced to 1/3 times the radial one at the decision time, by adopting the KK relations to utilize the information of the physically measured radial component of other time of the symbol period. In consequence, the KK receiver achieves 3/2 times the signal-to-noise ratio of balanced heterodyne detection, while presenting an asymmetric quantum fluctuation distribution depending on the time-varying phase. Therefore, the KK receiver provides a feasible scheme to reduce the quantum fluctuation for obtaining the selected component to 2/ 3 times that of physically measuring the same component of the coherent state. This work provides a physical insight of the KK receiver and should enrich the knowledge of electromagnetic noise in quantum optical measurement.

quant-ph↗

Observation of spectral lines in the exceptional GRB 221009A

As the brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed, GRB 221009A provided a precious opportunity to explore spectral line features. In this paper, we performed a comprehensive spectroscopy analysis of GRB 221009A jointly with GECAM-C and Fermi/GBM data to search for emission and absorption lines. For the first time we investigated the line feature throughout this GRB including the most bright part where many instruments suffered problems, and identified prominent emission lines in multiple time intervals. The central energy of the Gaussian emission line evolves from about 37 MeV to 6 MeV, with a nearly constant ratio (about 10\%) between the line width and central energy. Particularly, we find that both the central energy and the energy flux of the emission line evolve with time as a power law decay with power law index of -1 and -2 respectively. We suggest that the observed emission lines most likely originate from the blue-shifted electron positron pair annihilation 511 keV line. We find that a standard high latitude emission scenario cannot fully interpret the observation, thus we propose that the emission line comes from some dense clumps with electron positron pairs traveling together with the jet. In this scenario, we can use the emission line to directly, for the first time, measure the bulk Lorentz factor of the jet ($Γ$) and reveal its time evolution (i.e. $Γ\sim t^{-1}$) during the prompt emission. Interestingly, we find that the flux of the annihilation line in the co-moving frame keeps constant. These discoveries of the spectral line features shed new and important lights on the physics of GRB and relativistic jet.

astro-ph.HE↗

LTGC: Long-tail Recognition via Leveraging LLMs-driven Generated Content

Long-tail recognition is challenging because it requires the model to learn good representations from tail categories and address imbalances across all categories. In this paper, we propose a novel generative and fine-tuning framework, LTGC, to handle long-tail recognition via leveraging generated content. Firstly, inspired by the rich implicit knowledge in large-scale models (e.g., large language models, LLMs), LTGC leverages the power of these models to parse and reason over the original tail data to produce diverse tail-class content. We then propose several novel designs for LTGC to ensure the quality of the generated data and to efficiently fine-tune the model using both the generated and original data. The visualization demonstrates the effectiveness of the generation module in LTGC, which produces accurate and diverse tail data. Additionally, the experimental results demonstrate that our LTGC outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods on popular long-tailed benchmarks.

cs.CV↗

Survey on Visual Signal Coding and Processing with Generative Models: Technologies, Standards and Optimization

This paper provides a survey of the latest developments in visual signal coding and processing with generative models. Specifically, our focus is on presenting the advancement of generative models and their influence on research in the domain of visual signal coding and processing. This survey study begins with a brief introduction of well-established generative models, including the Variational Autoencoder (VAE) models, Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) models, Autoregressive (AR) models, Normalizing Flows and Diffusion models. The subsequent section of the paper explores the advancements in visual signal coding based on generative models, as well as the ongoing international standardization activities. In the realm of visual signal processing, our focus lies on the application and development of various generative models in the research of visual signal restoration. We also present the latest developments in generative visual signal synthesis and editing, along with visual signal quality assessment using generative models and quality assessment for generative models. The practical implementation of these studies is closely linked to the investigation of fast optimization. This paper additionally presents the latest advancements in fast optimization on visual signal coding and processing with generative models. We hope to advance this field by providing researchers and practitioners a comprehensive literature review on the topic of visual signal coding and processing with generative models.

eess.IV↗

DEMO: A Statistical Perspective for Efficient Image-Text Matching

Image-text matching has been a long-standing problem, which seeks to connect vision and language through semantic understanding. Due to the capability to manage large-scale raw data, unsupervised hashing-based approaches have gained prominence recently. They typically construct a semantic similarity structure using the natural distance, which subsequently provides guidance to the model optimization process. However, the similarity structure could be biased at the boundaries of semantic distributions, causing error accumulation during sequential optimization. To tackle this, we introduce a novel hashing approach termed Distribution-based Structure Mining with Consistency Learning (DEMO) for efficient image-text matching. From a statistical view, DEMO characterizes each image using multiple augmented views, which are considered as samples drawn from its intrinsic semantic distribution. Then, we employ a non-parametric distribution divergence to ensure a robust and precise similarity structure. In addition, we introduce collaborative consistency learning which not only preserves the similarity structure in the Hamming space but also encourages consistency between retrieval distribution from different directions in a self-supervised manner. Through extensive experiments on three benchmark image-text matching datasets, we demonstrate that DEMO achieves superior performance compared with many state-of-the-art methods.

cs.CV↗