Predicting face attributes in the wild is challenging due to complex face variations. We propose a novel deep learning framework for attribute prediction in the wild. It cascades two CNNs, LNet and ANet, which are fine-tuned jointly with attribute tags, but pre-trained differently. LNet is pre-trained by massive general object categories for face localization, while ANet is pre-trained by massive face identities for attribute prediction. This framework not only outperforms the state-of-the-art with a large margin, but also reveals valuable facts on learning face representation. 
(1) It shows how the performances of face localization (LNet) and attribute prediction (ANet) can be improved by different pre-training strategies. 
(2) It reveals that although the filters of LNet are fine-tuned only with image-level attribute tags, their response maps over entire images have strong indication of face locations. This fact enables training LNet for face localization with only image-level annotations, but without face bounding boxes or landmarks, which are required by all attribute recognition works. 
(3) It also demonstrates that the high-level hidden neurons of ANet automatically discover semantic concepts after pre-training with massive face identities, and such concepts are significantly enriched after fine-tuning with attribute tags. Each attribute can be well explained with a sparse linear combination of these concepts.

Deep Learning Face Attributes in the Wild

Usually, a proof of a theorem contains more knowledge than the mere fact that the theorem is true. For instance, to prove that a graph is Hamiltonian it suffices to exhibit a Hamiltonian tour in it; however, this seems to contain more knowledge than the single bit Hamiltonian/non-Hamiltonian.In this paper a computational complexity theory of the “knowledge” contained in a proof is developed. Zero-knowledge proofs are defined as those proofs that convey no additional knowledge other than the correctness of the proposition in question. Examples of zero-knowledge proof systems are given for the languages of quadratic residuosity and 'quadratic nonresiduosity. These are the first examples of zero-knowledge proofs for languages not known to be efficiently recognizable.

/pdf/the-knowledge-complexity-of-interactive-proof-systems-31apre0ecf.pdf

The knowledge complexity of interactive proof-systems

In this paper, we define and explore proofs of retrievability (PORs). A POR scheme enables an archive or back-up service (prover) to produce a concise proof that a user (verifier) can retrieve a target file F, that is, that the archive retains and reliably transmits file data sufficient for the user to recover F in its entirety.A POR may be viewed as a kind of cryptographic proof of knowledge (POK), but one specially designed to handle a large file (or bitstring) F. We explore POR protocols here in which the communication costs, number of memory accesses for the prover, and storage requirements of the user (verifier) are small parameters essentially independent of the length of F. In addition to proposing new, practical POR constructions, we explore implementation considerations and optimizations that bear on previously explored, related schemes.In a POR, unlike a POK, neither the prover nor the verifier need actually have knowledge of F. PORs give rise to a new and unusual security definition whose formulation is another contribution of our work.We view PORs as an important tool for semi-trusted online archives. Existing cryptographic techniques help users ensure the privacy and integrity of files they retrieve. It is also natural, however, for users to want to verify that archives do not delete or modify files prior to retrieval. The goal of a POR is to accomplish these checks without users having to download the files themselves. A POR can also provide quality-of-service guarantees, i.e., show that a file is retrievable within a certain time bound.

PORs: Proofs of Retrievability for Large Files

Annual Energy Outlook

Journal of the ACM

Clustering by fast search and find of density peaks via heat diffusion

Sentiment analysis of extremism in social media from textual information

The telecare medical information systems (TMISs) provide the convenience to the patients/users to be served at home. Along with such ease, it is essential to preserve the privacy and to provide the security to the patients/users in TMIS. Often, authentication protocols are adopted to guarantee privacy and secure interaction between the patients/users and remote server. Recently, Chaudhry et al. pointed out that Islam et al. ’s scheme based on smart card is prone to user impersonation and server impersonation attacks. Chaudhry et al. later presented an enhanced scheme based on elliptic curve cryptography to remedy the weaknesses of Islam et al. ’s scheme. Unfortunately, we find some important limitations in both schemes. We remark that their scheme is prone to off-line password guessing attack, user/server impersonation attack, and man-in-middle attack. To overcome these limitations, we present an improved authentication scheme keeping apart the threats encountered in the design of Chaudhry et al. ’s scheme. Moreover, the presented scheme can also resist all known attacks. We prove the security of the proposed scheme with the help of widespread Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic. A brief comparison with the previous works provides that the presented protocol is more efficient and more secure than other related schemes.

A Robust Mutual Authentication Scheme Based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Telecare Medical Information Systems

The theme of paper is to explore the trade-environment relationship and the role of institutions for 117 countries from global standpoint and five regions: Sub Saharan, European, Middle East and North Africa, Asia and Pacific, and Latin America and Caribbean, using the panel data span 2002–2014. By considering the endogeneity problem, to validate the nature of trade-environment nexuses, we applied the GMM first difference model in two steps. Likewise, Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality analysis is employed to affirm the causal relationship among the concern variables. The empirical findings of this study validate that the overall trade is significantly good to environment for sample countries (117) of the entire World, Europe, Asia, and Pacific regions. In further assessment, we incorporate interactive terms of institutions with trade, scale effect, and scale-technique effect. The estimated results confirm that institution is the persistent instrument for resolving the environmental problems. Furthermore, we find the evidence of inverted u shape EKC in overall selected sample of the World, Sub-Saharan, Europe, Asia, and Pacific regions. In contrast, there is no confirmation of inverted u shape EKC hypothesis in Middle East and North Africa regions. Similarly, no strong evidence of inverted u-shaped EKC hypothesis is observed in Latin-America and Caribbean region.

The trade-environment nexus in light of governance: a global potential

The privacy of users must be considered as the utmost priority in distributed networks. To protect the identities of users, attribute-based encryption (ABE) was presented by Sahai et al. ABE has been widely used in many scenarios, particularly in cloud computing. In this paper, public key encryption with equality test is concatenated with key-policy ABE (KP-ABE) to present KP-ABE with equality test (KP-ABEwET). The proposed scheme not only offers fine-grained authorization of ciphertexts but also protects the identities of users. In contrast to ABE with keyword search, KP-ABEwET can test whether the ciphertexts encrypted by different public keys contain the same information. Moreover, the authorization process of the presented scheme is more flexible than that of Ma et al. ’s scheme. Furthermore, the proposed scheme achieves one-way against chosen-ciphertext attack based on the bilinear Diffie-Hellman (BDH) assumption. In addition, a new computational problem called the twin-decision BDH problem (tDBDH) is proposed in this paper. tDBDH is proved to be as hard as the decisional BDH problem. Finally, for the first time, the security model of authorization is provided, and the security of authorization based on the tDBDH assumption is proven in the random oracle model.

Haseeb Ahmad

Papers

Clustering by fast search and find of density peaks via heat diffusion

Sentiment analysis of extremism in social media from textual information

A Robust Mutual Authentication Scheme Based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Telecare Medical Information Systems

The trade-environment nexus in light of governance: a global potential

Key-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption With Equality Test in Cloud Computing