Few-shot learning aims to learn classifiers for new classes with only a few training examples per class. Most existing few-shot learning approaches belong to either metric-based meta-learning or optimization-based meta-learning category, both of which have achieved successes in the simplified "$k$-shot $N$-way" image classification settings. Specifically, the optimization-based approaches train a meta-learner to predict the parameters of the task-specific classifiers. The task-specific classifiers are required to be homogeneous-structured to ease the parameter prediction, so the meta-learning approaches could only handle few-shot learning problems where the tasks share a uniform number of classes. The metric-based approaches learn one task-invariant metric for all the tasks. Even though the metric-learning approaches allow different numbers of classes, they require the tasks all coming from a similar domain such that there exists a uniform metric that could work across tasks. In this work, we propose a hybrid meta-learning model called Meta-Metric-Learner which combines the merits of both optimization- and metric-based approaches. Our meta-metric-learning approach consists of two components, a task-specific metric-based learner as a base model, and a meta-learner that learns and specifies the base model. Thus our model is able to handle flexible numbers of classes as well as generate more generalized metrics for classification across tasks. We test our approach in the standard "$k$-shot $N$-way" few-shot learning setting following previous works and a new realistic few-shot setting with flexible class numbers in both single-source form and multi-source forms. Experiments show that our approach can obtain superior performance in all settings.

We present new secure protocols for approximate $k$-nearest neighbor search ($k$-NNS) over the Euclidean distance in the semi-honest model. Our implementation is able to handle massive datasets efficiently. On the algorithmic front, we show a new circuit for the approximate top-$k$ selection from $n$ numbers that is built from merely $O(n + \mathrm{poly}(k))$ comparators. Using this circuit as a subroutine, we design new approximate $k$-NNS algorithms and two corresponding secure protocols: 1) optimized linear scan; 2) clustering-based sublinear time algorithm. Our secure protocols utilize a combination of additively-homomorphic encryption, garbled circuit and Oblivious RAM. Along the way, we introduce various optimizations to these primitives, which drastically improve concrete efficiency. We evaluate the new protocols empirically and show that they are able to handle datasets that are significantly larger than in the prior work. For instance, running on two standard Azure instances within the same availability zone, for a dataset of $96$-dimensional descriptors of $10\,000\,000$ images, we can find $10$ nearest neighbors with average accuracy $0.9$ in under $10$ seconds improving upon prior work by at least two orders of magnitude.

The classification of phase transitions is a central and challenging task in condensed matter physics. Typically, it relies on the identification of order parameters and the analysis of singularities in the free energy and its derivatives. Here, we propose an alternative framework to identify quantum phase transitions, employing both unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques. Using the axial next-nearest neighbor Ising (ANNNI) model as a benchmark, we show how unsupervised learning can detect three phases (ferromagnetic, paramagnetic, and a cluster of the antiphase with the floating phase) as well as two distinct regions within the paramagnetic phase. Employing supervised learning we show that transfer learning becomes possible: a machine trained only with nearest-neighbour interactions can learn to identify a new type of phase occurring when next-nearest-neighbour interactions are introduced. All our results rely on few and low dimensional input data (up to twelve lattice sites), thus providing a computational friendly and general framework for the study of phase transitions in many-body systems.

Synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) imagery can generate high resolution images of the seafloor. Thus, segmentation algorithms can be used to partition the images into different seafloor environments. In this paper, we compare two possibilistic segmentation approaches. Possibilistic approaches allow for the ability to detect novel or outlier environments as well as well known classes. The Possibilistic Fuzzy Local Information C-Means (PFLICM) algorithm has been previously applied to segment SAS imagery. Additionally, the Possibilistic K-Nearest Neighbors (PKNN) algorithm has been used in other domains such as landmine detection and hyperspectral imagery. In this paper, we compare the segmentation performance of a semi-supervised approach using PFLICM and a supervised method using Possibilistic K-NN. We include final segmentation results on multiple SAS images and a quantitative assessment of each algorithm.

A few examples with custom CNN design include acoustic in several machine learning tasks such as image classification, modeling for low resource languages [8], object and action classification object tracking, and keyword spotting. However, given that [9] and remote sensing [10]. On the other hand, medical image they contain a large number of parameters, their direct applicability classification [11] requires assignment of medical images (drawn into low resource tasks is not straightforward. In this work, we from real world patients) to a medical landmark, phenomenon or a experiment with an application of CNN models to gastrointestinal disease and often, obtaining large amounts of training data can be landmark classification with only a few thousands of training samples challenging. A few approaches for medical image classification include through transfer learning. As in a standard transfer learning the use of decision trees [12], k-nearest-neighbors [13] and approach, we train CNNs on a large external corpus, followed by support vector machines [14].

In this study, we establish a basis for selecting similarity measures when applying machine learning techniques to solve materials science problems. This selection is considered with an emphasis on the distinctiveness between materials that reflect their nature well. We perform a case study with a dataset of rare-earth transition metal crystalline compounds represented using the Orbital Field Matrix descriptor and the Coulomb Matrix descriptor. We perform predictions of the formation energies using k-nearest neighbors regression, ridge regression, and kernel ridge regression. Through detailed analyses of the yield prediction accuracy, we examine the relationship between the characteristics of the material representation and similarity measures, and the complexity of the energy function they can capture. Empirical experiments and theoretical analysis reveal that similarity measures and kernels that minimize the loss of materials distinctiveness improve the prediction performance.

Despite a large amount of attention on adversarial examples, very few works have demonstrated an effective defense against this threat. We examine Deep k-Nearest Neighbor (DkNN), a proposed defense that combines k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) and deep learning to improve the model's robustness to adversarial examples. It is challenging to evaluate the robustness of this scheme due to a lack of efficient algorithm for attacking kNN classifiers with large k and high-dimensional data. We propose a heuristic attack that allows us to use gradient descent to find adversarial examples for kNN classifiers, and then apply it to attack the DkNN defense as well. Results suggest that our attack is moderately stronger than any naive attack on kNN and significantly outperforms other attacks on DkNN.

In this research, an emotion recognition system is developed based on valence/arousal model using electroencephalography (EEG) signals. EEG signals are decomposed into the gamma, beta, alpha and theta frequency bands using discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and spectral features are extracted from each frequency band. Principle component analysis (PCA) is applied to the extracted features by preserving the same dimensionality, as a transform, to make the features mutually uncorrelated. Support vector machine (SVM), K-nearest neighbor (KNN) and artificial neural network (ANN) are used to classify emotional states. The cross-validated SVM with radial basis function (RBF) kernel using extracted features of 10 EEG channels, performs with 91.3% accuracy for arousal and 91.1% accuracy for valence, both in the beta frequency band. Our approach shows better performance compared to existing algorithms applied to the "DEAP" dataset.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) have been pervasive including smart grid, autonomous automobile systems, medical monitoring, process control systems, robotics systems, and automatic pilot avionics. As usually implemented on embedded devices, CPS is typically constrained by computation capacity and energy consumption. In some CPS applications such as telemedicine and advanced driving assistance system (ADAS), data processing on the embedded devices is preferred due to security/safety and real-time requirement. Therefore, high efficiency is highly desirable for such CPS applications. In this paper we present CeNN quantization for high-efficient processing for CPS applications, particularly telemedicine and ADAS applications. We systematically put forward powers-of-two based incremental quantization of CeNNs for efficient hardware implementation. The incremental quantization contains iterative procedures including parameter partition, parameter quantization, and re-training. We propose five different strategies including random strategy, pruning inspired strategy, weighted pruning inspired strategy, nearest neighbor strategy, and weighted nearest neighbor strategy. Experimental results show that our approach can achieve a speedup up to 7.8x with no performance loss compared with the state-of-the-art FPGA solutions for CeNNs.

Algorithms often carry out equally many computations for "easy" and "hard" problem instances. In particular, algorithms for finding nearest neighbors typically have the same running time regardless of the particular problem instance. In this paper, we consider the approximate k-nearest-neighbor problem, which is the problem of finding a subset of O(k) points in a given set of points that contains the set of k nearest neighbors of a given query point. We propose an algorithm based on adaptively estimating the distances, and show that it is essentially optimal out of algorithms that are only allowed to adaptively estimate distances. We then demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally that the algorithm can achieve significant speedups relative to the naive method.