Abstract

We consider a generalization of the recently proposed gradient coding framework where a large dataset is divided across n workers and each worker transmits to a master node one or more linear combinations of the gradients over the data subsets assigned to it. Unlike the conventional framework which requires the master node to recover the sum of the gradients over all the data subsets in the presence of s straggler workers, we relax the goal of the master node to computing the sum of at least some α fraction of the gradients. The broad goal of our work is to study the optimal computation and communication load per worker for this approximate gradient coding framework. We begin by deriving a lower bound on the computation load of any feasible scheme and also propose a strategy which achieves this lower bound, albeit at the cost of high communication load and a number of data partitions which can be polynomial in the number of workers n. We then restrict attention to schemes which utilize a number of data partitions equal to n and propose schemes based on cyclic assignment which have a lower communication load. When each worker transmits a single linear combination, we also prove lower bounds on the computation load of any scheme using n data partitions.

Abstract

A smart thermal patch for adaptive thermotherapy is provided. In an embodiment, the patch can be a stretchable, non-polymeric, conductive thin film flexible and non-invasive body integrated mobile thermal heater with wireless control capabilities that can be used to provide adaptive thermotherapy. The patch can be geometrically and spatially tunable on various pain locations. Adaptability allows the amount of heating to be tuned based on the temperature of the treated portion.

Abstract

Text articles with false claims, especially news, have recently become aggravating for the Internet users. These articles are in wide circulation and readers face difficulty discerning fact from fiction. Previous work on credibility assessment has focused on factual analysis and linguistic features. The task's main challenge is the distinction between the features of true and false articles. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called Credibility Outcome (CREDO) which aims at scoring the credibility of an article in an open domain setting. CREDO consists of different modules for capturing various features responsible for the credibility of an article. These features includes credibility of the article's source and author, semantic similarity between the article and related credible articles retrieved from a knowledge base, and sentiments conveyed by the article. A neural network architecture learns the contribution of each of these modules to the overall credibility of an article. Experiments on Snopes dataset reveals that CREDO outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches based on linguistic features.

Abstract

Code-mixed data is an important challenge of natural language processing because its characteristics completely vary from the traditional structures of standard languages. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called Sentiment Analysis of Code-Mixed Text (SACMT) to classify sentences into their corresponding sentiment-positive, negative or neutral, using contrastive learning. We utilize the shared parameters of siamese networks to map the sentences of code-mixed and standard languages to a common sentiment space. Also, we introduce a basic clustering based preprocessing method to capture variations of code-mixed transliterated words. Our experiments reveal that SACMT outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches in sentiment analysis for code-mixed text by 7.6% in accuracy and 10.1% in F-score.

Abstract

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are becoming popular in multilingual societies. This trend induces portmanteau of South Asian languages with English. The blend of multiple languages as code-mixed data has recently become popular in research communities for various NLP tasks. Code-mixed data consist of anomalies such as grammatical errors and spelling variations. In this paper, we leverage the contextual property of words where the different spelling variation of words share similar context in a large noisy social media text. We capture different variations of words belonging to same context in an unsupervised manner using distributed representations of words. Our experiments reveal that preprocessing of the code-mixed dataset based on our approach improves the performance in state-of-the-art part-of-speech tagging (POS-tagging) and sentiment analysis tasks.

Abstract

The introduction of emojis (or emoticons) in social media platforms has given the users an increased potential for expression. We propose a novel method called Classification of Emojis using Siamese Network Architecture (CESNA) to learn emoji-based representations of resource-poor languages by jointly training them with resource-rich languages using a siamese network. CESNA model consists of twin Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Networks (Bi-LSTM RNN) with shared parameters joined by a contrastive loss function based on a similarity metric. The model learns the representations of resource-poor and resource-rich language in a common emoji space by using a similarity metric based on the emojis present in sentences from both languages. The model, hence, projects sentences with similar emojis closer to each other and the sentences with different emojis farther from one another. Experiments on large-scale Twitter datasets of resource-rich languages-English and Spanish and resource-poor languages-Hindi and Telugu reveal that CESNA outperforms the state-of-the-art emoji prediction approaches based on distributional semantics, semantic rules, lexicon lists and deep neural network representations without shared parameters.

Abstract

To implement a blockchain, we need a blockchain protocol for all the nodes to follow. To design a blockchain protocol, we need a block publisher selection mechanism and a chain selection rule. In Proof-of-Stake (PoS) based blockchain protocols, block publisher selection mechanism selects the node to publish the next block based on the relative stake held by the node. However, PoS protocols may face vulnerability to fully adaptive corruptions. In literature, researchers address this issue at the cost of performance. In this paper, we propose a novel PoS-based blockchain protocol, QuickSync, to achieve security against fully adaptive corruptions without compromising on performance. We propose a metric called block power, a value defined for each block, derived from the output of the verifiable random function based on the digital signature of the block publisher. With this metric, we compute chain power, the sum of block powers of all the blocks comprising the chain, for all the valid chains. These metrics are a function of the block publisher's stake to enable the PoS aspect of the protocol. The chain selection rule selects the chain with the highest chain power as the one to extend. This chain selection rule hence determines the selected block publisher of the previous block. When we use metrics to define the chain selection rule, it may lead to vulnerabilities against Sybil attacks. QuickSync uses a Sybil attack resistant function implemented using histogram matching. We prove that QuickSync satisfies common prefix, chain growth, and chain quality properties and hence it is secure. We also show that it is resilient to different types of adversarial …

Abstract

The roles of trait anxiety, psychological flexibility and coping strategies on the mental health impacts of COVID-19 on college students in India INTRODUCTION The lives of many students had a tremendous impact during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, pandemic woes got extended due to the second wave when everyone was expecting an end to a year long-suffering in India. Schools, universities and institutes were shut down, resulting in the online culture again. Further, uncertainty over the exam dates apart from the competition itself loomed the distress and added misery for those transitioning to college. Recent studies suggest that COVID-19 increases psychological stress. More specifically, quarantine is associated with emotional stress, depression, irritation, adverse changes in sleep patterns and emotional tiredness. Despite the devastating psychosocial and cognitive impact of COVID-19 on individuals suffering from COVID-19 or not, some individuals did not get affected as much as others. In this study, we evaluate the individual coping strategies and psychological flexibility, and their association with trait anxiety to explain these individual differences in psychological health (generalized anxiety, depression, and stress) and cognitive health using cognitive tasks in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. Such analysis would not only help to shed more light on the underlying nature of the effects of pandemic stressors but would also enable healthcare professionals to design particular interventions at the individual level. METHOD Total 254 college students (75 women, 176 men, 1 trans woman, 2 did not specify; mean age=20.57, median age=20) were recruited for this study and were provided monetary incentives. The data collection lasted for 3.5 weeks, starting from 22 September 2021, while the second wave was declining. The study consisted of a general demographics survey, COVID-19 specific impact variables (such as living conditions, unhealthy behaviours, impact on academic life), and delirium questions. Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) for measuring the severity of depressive symptoms, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7) to assess anxiety disorder, Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) for evaluating the degree to which the student perceives life as unpredictable and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-10) for measuring potentiality as well as the actuality of anxiety. To assess the coping style and psychological flexibility, Brief COPE-28 and Multidimensional Psychological Flexibility Inventory (MPFI-24) were employed, respectively. Further, Stroop Task and Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) were used as objective measures to assess the individual's ability to inhibit cognitive interference and attention, respectively. RESULTS Among 254 college students who participated in this study, 73.6% reported having a close one infected with the virus, among which 19.7% passed away, showing the significant prevalence of COVID-19 in India during the time of the study. Further, 26.7% of the participants reported being self infected by the virus, among which 2.9% were put on a ventilator. Among these covid infected participants, 17.6% reported experiencing strange things that they could not explain, 16.2% felt people were talking about them behind their back, and 2.9% heard or saw things that others could not, which corroborates recent findings on delirium in COVID-19 patients. On a scale of 1-5, among the sample, the mean academic stress was found to be 4.07 (median=4) and stress due to social isolation 3.93 (median=4). Three major analyses: correlational, regression and mediation, were performed to evaluate the relation of COVID-19 impact variables and psychological health. We observed a strong negative correlation (p<0.01) between the measures such as perception of mental space, proper sleep, managing academics, social isolation during the pandemic with at least three out of the four mental health variables: PHQ, GAD, PSS and STAI-S (state) suggesting that poorer the student's ability to manage his/her/their life effectively the worse is the overall anxiety levels and depressive symptoms. For further analysis, these measures were collated into a single index called COVID-19 Impact Index, as they describe the overall impact on the lives of college students during the pandemic. The COVID-19 Impact Index was significantly positively correlated (p<0.01) with the measures such as PHQ [ρ=0.54], GAD [ρ=0.51] and PSS [ρ=0.48], suggesting a high level of distress and depressive symptoms among students most impacted by COVID-19. For investigating the relationship between dependent variables (PSS, PHQ, GAD and STAI-S) with the variables such as COVID-19 Impact Index, coping strategies, psychological flexibility and STAI-T, a multilinear regression model was trained for each dependent variable individually. The individual models trained for the outcome as PSS, PHQ, GAD, and STAI-S accounted for a significant portion of the variance by predicting 62.8%, 60.3%, 58.8%, and 47.5% of the variance, respectively. Significant contributors in the variance of all the models were found to be trait anxiety (STAI-T) and COVID-19 Impact Index, which suggests that the student's predisposition to experience negative emotions such as worries, fears, and anxiety is among other factors a relatively significant predictor of the negative experience during the pandemic time. Avoidant coping strategy and psychological inflexibility were also significant predictors in most of the models, suggesting that the students who chose to avoid rather than deal with the stressors posed by the COVID-19 situation were more likely to develop depressive symptoms, stress and anxiety. The central role of STAI-T is further confirmed with the mediational analysis of the direct effect of the COVID-19 Impact Index on psychological health variables (PSS, PHQ, GAD and STAI-S). STAI-T is found to be most significantly positively mediating the direct effect in all the models compared to other parallel mediators: psychological flexibility and coping strategies, suggesting a higher increase in overall worsening of psychological health due to COVID-19 impact when a student has a predisposition of anxiety as compared to other students. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This study showed the severe impact of COVID-19 amongst the students after the second wave ended, corroborating recent worldwide studies. Further, it helped to identify specific factors that result in individual differences while dealing with the pandemic's stressors due to its uncertain nature. Predisposition to anxiety (STAI-T), among other factors, was crucial when predicting the propensity to depression, stress and anxiety; thus, such individuals could be identified early on. Health professionals can further employ approaches that promote psychological flexibility, such as Acceptance Commitment Therapy and educate about different coping styles promoting active coping.

Abstract

The impact of the second wave of COVID-19 on Indian students and the mediating roles of psychological flexibility and coping strategies on this impact INTRODUCTION India was hit severely by the second wave of COVID-19 from April to June 2021, with daily cases rising exponentially and imposed mandatory lockdown. With schools and colleges closed, students were forced to deal with online schooling, social isolation, close ones getting infected, and uncertainty regarding personal goals since major exams and job offers were cancelled. Previous studies have found detrimental effects of the pandemic imposed environment, but not many studies have been done in India, especially with a focus on students. We aimed to detect the specific environmental factors created by the pandemic that impact these students' mental health and attention capacity and understand the psychological mechanisms that exacerbate or mitigate this impact. In this study, we looked at two mechanisms, the first being psychological flexibility: recognizing and adapting to various situational demands. In the context of COVID-19, it is one of the key resilience variables in the fights against mental health issues. The second was coping strategies, which can be categorized into two styles: approach coping, where individual attempts to handle a problem by actively taking steps towards a solution, and avoidant coping, where an individual attempts to retreat from or deny the problem. METHOD 290 students were recruited for the study via mail and snowball sampling. The study took thirty minutes, and participants were provided monetary incentives. The experiment consisted of Demographics: age, gender and intermediate or college student; COVID-19 environment variables such as length of lockdown, perceived personal space, verbal/physical fights at home and infection among family; General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12) to measure psychological distress; Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) to screen for depression; COVID-19 Student Stress Questionnaire-7 (CSSQ-7) to measure stress; CompACT-8 to measure psychological flexibility; Brief COPE-28 to assess coping styles; Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) to measure sustained attention and Stroop task to measure selective attention. The data collection started on 30 May 2021 with the last data collected on 22 June 2021. RESULTS Participants' profile 71% of the participants were male [average age=18.8], and 48% were college students. Coming to the effects of COVID-19, 30.7% were infected with the virus. Moreover, almost 90% of the participants were either themselves infected or had a close one infected with COVID-19, and 32.4% had a death of a close one, which shows how far-reaching and severe the virus was in India during the second wave. Participants gave an average rating of 3.5 out of 5 when asked how much they worried about the effect of COVID-19 on their lives. 65.5% of the participants were distressed, 37.9% were screened for depression, and 68.6% were moderate to highly stressed. These results reflect the severity of the pandemic's mental health and personal life impacts. Our sample had significantly higher GHQ scores than those seen in general population samples in India during the same period, indicating that students were impacted more within the context of the second wave than the general population. Environmental Factors and psychological health variables When looking at the correlational analysis, we detected six environmental factors (length of lockdown, self getting infected, close ones getting infected, lack of personal space, increase in fights at home and COVID-19 worry) that were significantly associated with the outcome health variables (distress, depression and stress) and were used to form the COVID-19 Impact Index. This index had moderate positive correlations (p<0.01) with GHQ [ρ=0.36], CSSQ [ρ=0.37] and avoidant coping [ρ=0.3] and negative correlations (p<0.01) with flexibility [ρ=-0.31]. Psychological Flexibility had significant negative correlations (p<0.01) with GHQ-12 [ρ=-0.51], PHQ-2 [ρ=-0.25] and CSSQ-7 [ρ=-0.32] whereas avoidant coping had significant positive correlations (p<0.01) with GHQ-12 [ρ=0.54], PHQ-2 [ρ=0.27] and CSSQ-7 [ρ=0.39]. This suggests that flexibility correlated significantly with better overall psychological health while COVID-19 Impact Index and avoidant coping correlated with worse overall health. Cognitive health and psychological health variables Unlike previous studies, none of the predictor variables (COVID-19 Impact Index, psychological flexibility, coping strategies) correlated with either attention measure. Within the outcome variables, sustained attention correlated negatively with stress and selective attention correlated negatively with distress and depression. Regression analysis was done to see how well the predictor variables could predict the outcome variables. We only ran models for the outcome health variables since the attention measures did not correlate with the predictors. The final model for distress accounted for 42.5% of the variance, the final model for depression accounted for 14.4% of the variance, and the final model for stress accounted for 28% of the variance. Results show that the predictors account for a moderate portion of the variance among distress and stress. The prediction for depression was low since we used a screener questionnaire instead of the entire questionnaire. Since GHQ-12 and CSSQ-7 correlated with COVID-19 Impact Index, we conducted mediation analysis for both relations with three parallel mediators (flexibility, avoidant and approach coping). Results showed that flexibility mediated a decrease in the effects of the index on distress while avoidant coping mediated an increase in the effects of the index on distress and stress. CONCLUSION To summarize, this study showed the severe impact of COVID-19 on students in India. It detected factors like length of lockdown, lack of personal space, increased fights at home, infection of self and close ones, and general worry about COVID-19 as detrimental to mental health. It also showed psychological flexibility as a resilience mechanism that mitigates this detrimental impact, while avoidant coping strategies exacerbate the impact. These results support interventions and approaches that promote flexibility, like Acceptance Commitment Therapy. Knowing the specific factors of the environment that affect mental health may also contribute to the development and testing of these approaches.

Abstract

This paper presents a descriptive analysis to understand how researchers play a significant role within emerging innovation clusters. We highlight reasons that enable or inhibit researchers towards productization within scientific institutes in India. The paper focuses on understanding the above from a researcher’s point of view by analysing their motivation and concerns. Most research work from deep-tech computer science domains contain a shelf life when it comes to productization. Therefore, associated activities have a designated time period related to productization to avoid research leading to the product from falling into the Valley of death. As a result, researchers who work on projects resulting in potential productization become a crucial part of a successful research to productization flow of work. Our paper develops an understanding of and evaluates different aspects of a researchers’ journey as they relate to productization of deep-tech Computer Science research work. Index Terms - Innovation Clusters, Productization, Emerging Economy, Deep-tech Computer Science, India