Abstract: Many unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) methods have been proposed to bridge the domain gap by utilizing domain invariant information. Most approaches have chosen depth as such information and achieved remarkable successes. Despite their effectiveness, using depth as domain invariant information in UDA tasks may lead to multiple issues, such as excessively high extraction costs and difficulties in achieving a reliable prediction quality. As a result, we introduce Edge Learning based Domain Adaptation (ELDA), a framework which incorporates edge information into its training process to serve as a type of domain invariant information. Our experiments quantitatively and qualitatively demonstrate that the incorporation of edge information is indeed beneficial and effective, and enables ELDA to outperform the contemporary state-of-the-art methods on two commonly adopted benchmarks for semantic segmentation based UDA tasks.

Abstract: The present invention is directed blockchain systems and censuses protocols that adopt a pipelining technique. The systems and protocols involve a committee of consensus nodes that include proposer nodes and voter nodes. Each proposer node can send two or more unnotarized proposals to the voter nodes, and the voter nodes can vote on an unnotarized proposal when they have the same freshest notarized chain or block. A sequence number is provided to facilitate the operation of the systems and protocols. The sequence number can be used to determine the freshest notarized chain or block and the finalized chain and switch proposer node. The systems and protocols also provide other features such as chain syncer, committee election scheme, and committee reconfiguration. The systems and protocols further provide a simple finalization process and thus have a low finalization time.

Abstract: The present invention is directed blockchain systems and censuses protocols that adopt a pipelining technique. The systems and protocols involve a committee of consensus nodes that include proposer nodes and voter nodes. Each proposer node can send two or more unnotarized proposals to the voter nodes, and the voter nodes can vote on an unnotarized proposal when they have the same freshest notarized chain or block. A sequence number is provided to facilitate the operation of the systems and protocols. The sequence number can be used to determine the freshest notarized chain or block and the finalized chain and switch proposer node. The systems and protocols also provide other features such as chain syncer, committee election scheme, and committee reconfiguration. The systems and protocols further provide a simple finalization process and thus have a low finalization time.

Abstract: The present invention is directed blockchain systems and censuses protocols that adopt a pipelining technique. The systems and protocols involve a committee of consensus nodes that include proposer nodes and voter nodes. Each proposer node can send two or more unnotarized proposals to the voter nodes, and the voter nodes can vote on an unnotarized proposal when they have the same freshest notarized chain or block. A sequence number is provided to facilitate the operation of the systems and protocols. The sequence number can be used to determine the freshest notarized chain or block and the finalized chain and switch proposer node. The systems and protocols also provide other features such as chain syncer, committee election scheme, and committee reconfiguration. The systems and protocols further provide a simple finalization process and thus have a low finalization time.

Abstract: A method for capturing and organizing intelligence data using an organic data model includes: receiving one or more webpages containing social intelligence data; segmenting content of the one or more webpages containing social intelligence data; identifying named entities in the segmented content of the one or more webpages; identifying topics in the segmented content of the one or more webpages; identifying opinions in the segmented content of the one or more webpages; integrating the identified named entities, topics, and opinions to construct an organic object data model; and storing organic object data associated with the constructed organic object data model in an organic object database.

Abstract: A method for capturing and managing training data collected online includes: receiving a first dataset from one or more online sources; sampling the first dataset and generating a second dataset, the second dataset including the data sampled from the first dataset; receiving an annotated second dataset with predefined labels; and dividing the annotated second dataset into a training dataset and a test dataset. The disclosed method further includes: configuring a machine learning based classifier based on the training dataset; predicting at least one data point based on the training dataset and calculating a confidence score; comparing the at least one predicted data point to the test dataset; sorting the at least one predicted data point based on its confidence score; and receiving corrected training data associated with the at least one predicted data point.

Abstract: The present invention discloses discloses a composite PTFE membrane comprising an expanded PTFE membrane as substrate and a sintered porous PTFE membrane on top of it. The porous PTFE membrane on top has porous structure with interconnected channels formed with a sintering process that fuses the PTFE fine powders coated on the ePTFE membrane. Furthermore, the present invention discloses a method for forming the composite PTFE membrane.

Abstract: The present invention discloses discloses a composite PTFE membrane comprising an expanded PTFE membrane as substrate and a sintered porous PTFE membrane on top of it. The porous PTFE membrane on top has porous structure with interconnected channels formed with a sintering process that fuses the PTFE fine powders coated on the ePTFE membrane. Furthermore, the present invention discloses a method for forming the composite PTFE membrane.