Causify DataFlow A Framework for High-Performance Machine Learning Stream Processing

We present DataFlow, a computational framework for building, testing, and deploying high-performance machine learning systems on unbounded time-series data. Traditional data science workflows assume finite datasets and require substantial reimplementation when moving from batch prototypes to streaming production systems. This gap introduces causality violations, batch boundary artifacts, and poor reproducibility of real-time failures. DataFlow resolves these issues through a unified execution model based on directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) with point-in-time idempotency outputs at any time t depend only on a fixed-length context window preceding t. This guarantee ensures that models developed in batch mode execute identically in streaming production without code changes. The framework enforces strict causality by automatically tracking knowledge time across all transformations, eliminating future-peeking bugs. DataFlow supports flexible tiling across temporal and feature dimensions, allowing the same model to operate at different frequencies and memory profiles via configuration alone. It integrates natively with the Python data science stack and provides fit/predict semantics for online learning, caching and incremental computation, and automatic parallelization through DAG-based scheduling. We demonstrate its effectiveness across domains including financial trading, IoT, fraud detection, and real-time analytics.

February 05, 2026

paper research

Training DNN IoT Applications for Deployment on Analog NVM Crossbars

A trend towards energy-efficiency, security and privacy has led to a recent focus on deploying DNNs on microcontrollers. However, limits on compute and memory resources restrict the size and the complexity of the ML models deployable in these systems. Computation-In-Memory architectures based on resistive nonvolatile memory (NVM) technologies hold great promise of satisfying the compute and memory demands of high-performance and low-power, inherent in modern DNNs. Nevertheless, these technologies are still immature and suffer from both the intrinsic analog-domain noise problems and the inability of representing negative weights in the NVM structures, incurring in larger crossbar sizes with concomitant impact on ADCs and DACs. In this paper, we provide a training framework for addressing these challenges and quantitatively evaluate the circuit-level efficiency gains thus accrued. We make two contributions Firstly, we propose a training algorithm that eliminates the need for tuning individual layers of a DNN ensuring uniformity across layer weights and activations. This ensures analog-blocks that can be reused and peripheral hardware substantially reduced. Secondly, using NAS methods, we propose the use of unipolar-weighted (either all-positive or all-negative weights) matrices/sub-matrices. Weight unipolarity obviates the need for doubling crossbar area leading to simplified analog periphery. We validate our methodology with CIFAR10 and HAR applications by mapping to crossbars using 4-bit and 2-bit devices. We achieve up to 92 91% accuracy (95% floating-point) using 2-bit only-positive weights for HAR. A combination of the proposed techniques leads to 80% area improvement and up to 45% energy reduction.

February 05, 2026

paper research

Neural Turtle Graphics for Modeling City Road Layouts

We propose Neural Turtle Graphics (NTG), a novel generative model for spatial graphs, and demonstrate its applications in modeling city road layouts. Specifically, we represent the road layout using a graph where nodes in the graph represent control points and edges in the graph represent road segments. NTG is a sequential generative model parameterized by a neural network. It iteratively generates a new node and an edge connecting to an existing node conditioned on the current graph. We train NTG on Open Street Map data and show that it outperforms existing approaches using a set of diverse performance metrics. Moreover, our method allows users to control styles of generated road layouts mimicking existing cities as well as to sketch parts of the city road layout to be synthesized. In addition to synthesis, the proposed NTG finds uses in an analytical task of aerial road parsing. Experimental results show that it achieves state-of-the-art performance on the SpaceNet dataset.

February 05, 2026

paper research

Sharing Resources Smartly A Game-Theoretic Approach for Mobile Edge Clouds

Mobile edge computing seeks to provide resources to different delay-sensitive applications. This is a challenging problem as an edge cloud-service provider may not have sufficient resources to satisfy all resource requests. Furthermore, allocating available resources optimally to different applications is also challenging. Resource sharing among different edge cloud-service providers can address the aforementioned limitation as certain service providers may have resources available that can be ``rented by other service providers. However, edge cloud service providers can have different objectives or emph{utilities}. Therefore, there is a need for an efficient and effective mechanism to share resources among service providers, while considering the different objectives of various providers. We model resource sharing as a multi-objective optimization problem and present a solution framework based on emph{Cooperative Game Theory} (CGT). We consider the strategy where each service provider allocates resources to its native applications first and shares the remaining resources with applications from other service providers. We prove that for a monotonic, non-decreasing utility function, the game is canonical and convex. Hence, the emph{core} is not empty and the grand coalition is stable. We propose two algorithms emph{Game-theoretic Pareto optimal allocation} (GPOA) and emph{Polyandrous-Polygamous Matching based Pareto Optimal Allocation} (PPMPOA) that provide allocations from the core. Hence the obtained allocations are emph{Pareto} optimal and the grand coalition of all the service providers is stable. Experimental results confirm that our proposed resource sharing framework improves utilities of edge cloud-service providers and application request satisfaction.

February 05, 2026

paper research

Evolution Analysis of Use Cases Using Graph Transformation with Negative Application Conditions

Use Case (UC) quality impacts the overall quality and defect rate of a system, as they specify the expected behavior of an implementation. In a previous work, we have defined an approach for a step-by-step translation from UCs written in natural language to a formal description in terms of Graph Transformation (GT), where each step of the UC was translated to a transformation rule. This UC formalisation enables the detection of several specification problems even before an actual implementation is produced, thus reducing development costs. In this paper, we extend our approach to handle UC evolution by defining emph{evolution rules}, which are described as higher-order rules, simultaneously changing the behaviour of a set of transformation rules. We also support the use of emph{negative application conditions (NAC)} associated both to the transformation and evolution rules. Analysis of the interplay between the evolution rules and the rules describing UC steps shows the effects of an evolution and serves to identify potential impacts, even before the changes are actually carried out. Besides defining the theoretical foundations of UC evolution with NACs, we have implemented the evolution analysis technique in the Verigraph tool and used it to verify impacts in 3 different case studies. The results demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of our approach to help developers in the evolution process based on UCs.

February 04, 2026

paper research

sql4ml A Declarative End-to-End Workflow for Machine Learning

We present sql4ml, a system for expressing supervised machine learning (ML) models in SQL and automatically training them in TensorFlow. The primary motivation for this work stems from the observation that in many data science tasks there is a back-and-forth between a relational database that stores the data and a machine learning framework. Data preprocessing and feature engineering typically happen in a database, whereas learning is usually executed in separate ML libraries. This fragmented workflow requires from the users to juggle between different programming paradigms and software systems. With sql4ml the user can express both feature engineering and ML algorithms in SQL, while the system translates this code to an appropriate representation for training inside a machine learning framework. We describe our translation method, present experimental results from applying it on three well-known ML algorithms and discuss the usability benefits from concentrating the entire workflow on the database side.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Mapping the Macroeconomy Topologically

An understanding of the economic landscape in a world of ever increasing data necessitates representations of data that can inform policy, deepen understanding and guide future research. Topological Data Analysis offers a set of tools which deliver on all three calls. Abstract two-dimensional snapshots of multi-dimensional space readily capture non-monotonic relationships, inform of similarity between points of interest in parameter space, mapping such to outcomes. Specific examples show how some, but not all, countries have returned to Great Depression levels, and reappraise the links between real private capital growth and the performance of the economy. Theoretical and empirical expositions alike remind on the dangers of assuming monotonic relationships and discounting combinations of factors as determinants of outcomes; both dangers Topological Data Analysis addresses. Policy-makers can look at outcomes and target areas of the input space where such are not satisfactory, academics may additionally find evidence to motivate theoretical development, and practitioners can gain a rapid and robust base for decision making.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Properties of Decentralized Consensus Technology -- Why Not Every Blockchain Is a True Blockchain

Research in the field of blockchain technology and applications is increasing at a fast pace. Although the Bitcoin whitepaper by Nakamoto is already ten years old, the field can still be seen as immature and at an early stage. Current research in this area is lacking a commonly shared knowledge and consensus about terms used to describe the technology and its properties. At the same time this research is challenging fundamental aspects of the Bitcoin core concept. It has to be questioned whether all of these new approaches still adequately could be described as blockchain technology. We propose to use the term Decentralized Consensus Technology as a general category instead. Decentralized Consensus Technology consists of decentralized ledger and non-ledger technologies. Blockchain technology in turn is only one of multiple implementations of the Decentralized Ledger Technology. Furthermore, we identified three main characteristics of Decentralized Consensus Technology decentralization, trustlessness and ability to eventually reach consensus. Depending on the use case of the specific implementation the following additional properties have to be considered privacy, participation incentive, irreversibility and immutability, operation purpose, confirmation time, transaction costs, ability to externalize transactions and computations and scalability possibilities.

February 04, 2026

paper research

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Game-Based Coalescence in Multi-Agent Systems

Coalescence, as a kind of ubiquitous group behavior in the nature and society, means that agents, companies or other substances keep consensus in states and act as a whole. This paper considers coalescence for n rational agents with distinct initial states. Considering the rationality and intellectuality of the population, the coalescing process is described by a bimatrix game which has the unique mixed strategy Nash equilibrium solution. Since the process is not an independent stochastic process, it is difficult to analyze the coalescing process. By using the first Borel-Cantelli Lemma, we prove that all agents will coalesce into one group with probability one. Moreover, the expected coalescence time is also evaluated. For the scenario where payoff functions are power functions, we obtain the distribution and expected value of coalescence time. Finally, simulation examples are provided to validate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Large-Scale Traffic Signal Control with a New Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach

Finding the optimal signal timing strategy is a difficult task for the problem of large-scale traffic signal control (TSC). Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) is a promising method to solve this problem. However, there is still room for improvement in extending to large-scale problems and modeling the behaviors of other agents for each individual agent. In this paper, a new MARL, called Cooperative double Q-learning (Co-DQL), is proposed, which has several prominent features. It uses a highly scalable independent double Q-learning method based on double estimators and the UCB policy, which can eliminate the over-estimation problem existing in traditional independent Q-learning while ensuring exploration. It uses mean field approximation to model the interaction among agents, thereby making agents learn a better cooperative strategy. In order to improve the stability and robustness of the learning process, we introduce a new reward allocation mechanism and a local state sharing method. In addition, we analyze the convergence properties of the proposed algorithm. Co-DQL is applied on TSC and tested on a multi-traffic signal simulator. According to the results obtained on several traffic scenarios, Co- DQL outperforms several state-of-the-art decentralized MARL algorithms. It can effectively shorten the average waiting time of the vehicles in the whole road system.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Towards Automated Infographic Design Deep Learning-Based Auto-Extraction of Extensible Timelines

Designers need to consider not only perceptual effectiveness but also visual styles when creating an infographic. This process can be difficult and time consuming for professional designers, not to mention non-expert users, leading to the demand for automated infographics design. As a first step, we focus on timeline infographics, which have been widely used for centuries. We contribute an end-to-end approach that automatically extracts an extensible timeline template from a bitmap image. Our approach adopts a deconstruction and reconstruction paradigm. At the deconstruction stage, we propose a multi-task deep neural network that simultaneously parses two kinds of information from a bitmap timeline 1) the global information, i.e., the representation, scale, layout, and orientation of the timeline, and 2) the local information, i.e., the location, category, and pixels of each visual element on the timeline. At the reconstruction stage, we propose a pipeline with three techniques, i.e., Non-Maximum Merging, Redundancy Recover, and DL GrabCut, to extract an extensible template from the infographic, by utilizing the deconstruction results. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we synthesize a timeline dataset (4296 images) and collect a real-world timeline dataset (393 images) from the Internet. We first report quantitative evaluation results of our approach over the two datasets. Then, we present examples of automatically extracted templates and timelines automatically generated based on these templates to qualitatively demonstrate the performance. The results confirm that our approach can effectively extract extensible templates from real-world timeline infographics.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Heterogeneity in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Heterogeneity is a fundamental property in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), which is closely related not only to the functional differences of agents, but also to policy diversity and environmental interactions. However, the MARL field currently lacks a rigorous definition and deeper understanding of heterogeneity. This paper systematically discusses heterogeneity in MARL from the perspectives of definition, quantification, and utilization. First, based on an agent-level modeling of MARL, we categorize heterogeneity into five types and provide mathematical definitions. Second, we define the concept of heterogeneity distance and propose a practical quantification method. Third, we design a heterogeneity-based multi-agent dynamic parameter sharing algorithm as an example of the application of our methodology. Case studies demonstrate that our method can effectively identify and quantify various types of agent heterogeneity. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm, compared to other parameter sharing baselines, has better interpretability and stronger adaptability. The proposed methodology will help the MARL community gain a more comprehensive and profound understanding of heterogeneity, and further promote the development of practical algorithms.

February 04, 2026

paper research

The Viability and Performance of a Private LLM Server for SMBs A Benchmark Analysis of Qwen3-30B on Consumer-grade Hardware

The proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) has been accompanied by a reliance on cloud-based, proprietary systems, raising significant concerns regarding data privacy, operational sovereignty, and escalating costs. This paper investigates the feasibility of deploying a high-performance, private LLM inference server at a cost accessible to Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). We present a comprehensive benchmarking analysis of a locally hosted, quantized 30-billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model based on Qwen3, running on a consumer-grade server equipped with a next-generation NVIDIA GPU. Unlike cloud-based offerings, which are expensive and complex to integrate, our approach provides an affordable and private solution for SMBs. We evaluate two dimensions the model s intrinsic capabilities and the server s performance under load. Model performance is benchmarked against academic and industry standards to quantify reasoning and knowledge relative to cloud services. Concurrently, we measure server efficiency through latency, tokens per second, and time to first token, analyzing scalability under increasing concurrent users. Our findings demonstrate that a carefully configured on-premises setup with emerging consumer hardware and a quantized open-source model can achieve performance comparable to cloud-based services, offering SMBs a viable pathway to deploy powerful LLMs without prohibitive costs or privacy compromises.

February 04, 2026

paper research

PyBangla at BLP-2025 Task 2 Improving Bangla-to-Python Code Generation with Iterative Self-Correction and Multilingual Agents

LLMs excel at code generation from English prompts, but this progress has not extended to low-resource languages. We address Bangla-to-Python code generation by introducing BanglaCodeAct, an agent-based framework that leverages multi-agent prompting and iterative self-correction. Unlike prior approaches relying on task-specific fine-tuning, BanglaCodeAct employs an open-source multilingual LLM within a Thought-Code-Observation loop, enabling dynamic generation, testing, and refinement of code from Bangla instructions. We benchmark several small-parameter open-source LLMs and evaluate their effectiveness on the mHumanEval dataset for Bangla NL2Code. Our results show that Qwen3-8B, when deployed with BanglaCodeAct, achieves the best performance, with pass@1 accuracy of 94.0 % on the development set and 71.6 % on the blind test set. These results establish a new benchmark for Bangla-to-Python translation and highlight the potential of agent-based reasoning for reliable code generation in low-resource languages. Experimental scripts are publicly available at github.com/jahidulzaid/PyBanglaCodeActAgent.

February 04, 2026

paper research

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Coordinate Matrix Machine A Human-Level Approach to Classifying Very Similar Documents

Human-level concept learning argues that humans typically learn new concepts from a single example, whereas machine learning algorithms typically require hundreds of samples to learn a single concept. Our brain subconsciously identifies important features and learns more effectively. Contribution In this paper, we present the Coordinate Matrix Machine (CM$^2$). This purpose-built small model augments human intelligence by learning document structures and using this information to classify documents. While modern Red AI trends rely on massive pre-training and energy-intensive GPU infrastructure, CM$^2$ is designed as a Green AI solution. It achieves human-level concept learning by identifying only the structural important features a human would consider, allowing it to classify very similar documents using only one sample per class. Advantage Our algorithm outperforms traditional vectorizers and complex deep learning models that require larger datasets and significant compute. By focusing on structural coordinates rather than exhaustive semantic vectors, CM$^2$ offers 1. High accuracy with minimal data (one-shot learning) 2. Geometric and structural intelligence 3. Green AI and environmental sustainability 4. Optimized for CPU-only environments 5. Inherent explainability (glass-box model) 6. Faster computation and low latency 7. Robustness against unbalanced classes 8. Economic viability 9. Generic, expandable, and extendable

February 04, 2026

paper research

Emerging Multiplexing Techniques for High-Mobility Wireless Communication Scenarios

As wireless communication applications evolve from traditional multipath environments to high-mobility scenarios like unmanned aerial vehicles, multiplexing techniques have advanced accordingly. Traditional single-carrier frequency-domain equalization (SC-FDE) and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) have given way to emerging orthogonal time-frequency space (OTFS) and affine frequency-division multiplexing (AFDM). These approaches exploit specific channel structures to diagonalize or sparsify the effective channel, thereby enabling low-complexity detection. However, their reliance on these structures significantly limits their robustness in dynamic, real-world environments. To address these challenges, this paper studies a random multiplexing technique that is decoupled from the physical channels, enabling its application to arbitrary norm-bounded and spectrally convergent channel matrices. Random multiplexing achieves statistical fading-channel ergodicity for transmitted signals by constructing an equivalent input-isotropic channel matrix in the random transform domain. It guarantees the asymptotic replica MAP bit-error rate (BER) optimality of AMP-type detectors for linear systems with arbitrary norm-bounded, spectrally convergent channel matrices and signaling configurations, under the unique fixed point assumption. A low-complexity cross-domain memory AMP (CD-MAMP) detector is considered, leveraging the sparsity of the time-domain channel and the randomness of the equivalent channel. Optimal power allocations are derived to minimize the replica MAP BER and maximize the replica constrained capacity of random multiplexing systems. The optimal coding principle and replica constrained-capacity optimality of CD-MAMP detector are investigated for random multiplexing systems. Additionally, the versatility of random multiplexing in diverse wireless applications is explored.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Accelerating Discovery with a Global Network of Autonomous Scientific Agents

We introduce SCP the Science Context Protocol, an open-source standard designed to accelerate discovery by enabling a global network of autonomous scientific agents. SCP is built on two foundational pillars (1) Unified Resource Integration At its core, SCP provides a universal specification for describing and invoking scientific resources, spanning software tools, models, datasets, and physical instruments. This protocol-level standardization enables AI agents and applications to discover, call, and compose capabilities seamlessly across disparate platforms and institutional boundaries. (2) Orchestrated Experiment Lifecycle Management SCP complements the protocol with a secure service architecture, which comprises a centralized SCP Hub and federated SCP Servers. This architecture manages the complete experiment lifecycle (registration, planning, execution, monitoring, and archival), enforces fine-grained authentication and authorization, and orchestrates traceable, end-to-end workflows that bridge computational and physical laboratories. Based on SCP, we have constructed a scientific discovery platform that offers researchers and agents a large-scale ecosystem of more than 1,600 tool resources. Across diverse use cases, SCP facilitates secure, large-scale collaboration between heterogeneous AI systems and human researchers while significantly reducing integration overhead and enhancing reproducibility. By standardizing scientific context and tool orchestration at the protocol level, SCP establishes essential infrastructure for scalable, multi-institution, agent-driven science.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Hear the Heartbeat in Stages Physiologically-Informed Phase-Sensitive ECG Biometrics

Electrocardiography (ECG) is adopted for identity authentication in wearable devices due to its individual-specific characteristics and inherent liveness. However, existing methods often treat heartbeats as homogeneous signals, overlooking the phase-specific characteristics within the cardiac cycle. To address this, we propose a Hierarchical Phase-Aware Fusion~(HPAF) framework that explicitly avoids cross-feature entanglement through a three-stage design. In the first stage, Intra-Phase Representation (IPR) independently extracts representations for each cardiac phase, ensuring that phase-specific morphological and variation cues are preserved without interference from other phases. In the second stage, Phase-Grouped Hierarchical Fusion (PGHF) aggregates physiologically related phases in a structured manner, enabling reliable integration of complementary phase information. In the final stage, Global Representation Fusion (GRF) further combines the grouped representations and adaptively balances their contributions to produce a unified and discriminative identity representation. Moreover, considering ECG signals are continuously acquired, multiple heartbeats can be collected for each individual. We propose a Heartbeat-Aware Multi-prototype (HAM) enrollment strategy, which constructs a multi-prototype gallery template set to reduce the impact of heartbeat-specific noise and variability. Extensive experiments on three public datasets demonstrate that HPAF achieves state-of-the-art results in the comparison with other methods under both closed and open-set settings.

February 04, 2026

paper research

FAST-IDS A Rapid Two-Stage Intrusion Detection System with Hybrid Compression for Real-Time Threat Detection in Connected and Autonomous Vehicles

We have implemented a multi-stage IDS for CAVs that can be deployed to resourec-constrained environments after hybrid model compression.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Fast and Realistic Automated Scenario Simulations and Reporting for an Autonomous Racing System

In this paper, we describe the automated simulation and reporting pipeline implemented for our autonomous racing stack, ur.autopilot. The backbone of the simulation is based on a high-fidelity model of the vehicle interfaced as a Functional Mockup Unit (FMU). The pipeline can execute the software stack and the simulation up to three times faster than real-time, locally or on GitHub for Continuous Integration/- Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). As the most important input of the pipeline, there is a set of running scenarios. Each scenario allows the initialization of the ego vehicle in different initial conditions (position and speed), as well as the initialization of any other configuration of the stack. This functionality is essential to validate efficiently critical modules, like the one responsible for high-speed overtaking maneuvers or localization, which are among the most challenging aspects of autonomous racing. Moreover, we describe how we implemented a fault injection module, capable of introducing sensor delays and perturbations as well as modifying outputs of any node of the stack. Finally, we describe the design of our automated reporting process, aimed at maximizing the effectiveness of the simulation analysis.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Can Small Training Runs Reliably Guide Data Curation? Reevaluating the Proxy-Model Approach

Data teams at frontier AI companies routinely train small proxy models to make critical decisions about pretraining data recipes for full-scale training runs. However, the community has a limited understanding of whether and when conclusions drawn from small-scale experiments reliably transfer to full-scale model training. In this work, we uncover a subtle yet critical issue in the standard experimental protocol for data recipe assessment the use of identical small-scale model training configurations across all data recipes in the name of fair comparison. We show that the experiment conclusions about data quality can flip with even minor adjustments to training hyperparameters, as the optimal training configuration is inherently data-dependent. Moreover, this fixed-configuration protocol diverges from full-scale model development pipelines, where hyperparameter optimization is a standard step. Consequently, we posit that the objective of data recipe assessment should be to identify the recipe that yields the best performance under data-specific tuning. To mitigate the high cost of hyperparameter tuning, we introduce a simple patch to the evaluation protocol using reduced learning rates for proxy model training. We show that this approach yields relative performance that strongly correlates with that of fully tuned large-scale LLM pretraining runs. Theoretically, we prove that for random-feature models, this approach preserves the ordering of datasets according to their optimal achievable loss. Empirically, we validate this approach across 23 data recipes covering four critical dimensions of data curation, demonstrating dramatic improvements in the reliability of small-scale experiments.

February 04, 2026

paper research

An Adaptive, Disentangled Representation for Multidimensional MRI Reconstruction

We present a new approach for representing and reconstructing multidimensional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. Our method builds on a novel, learned feature-based image representation that disentangles different types of features, such as geometry and contrast, into distinct low-dimensional latent spaces, enabling better exploitation of feature correlations in multidimensional images and incorporation of pre-learned priors specific to different feature types for reconstruction. More specifically, the disentanglement was achieved via an encoderdecoder network and image transfer training using large public data, enhanced by a style-based decoder design. A latent diffusion model was introduced to impose stronger constraints on distinct feature spaces. New reconstruction formulations and algorithms were developed to integrate the learned representation with a zero-shot selfsupervised learning adaptation and subspace modeling. The proposed method has been evaluated on accelerated T1 and T2 parameter mapping, achieving improved performance over state-of-the-art reconstruction methods, without task-specific supervised training or fine-tuning. This work offers a new strategy for learning-based multidimensional image reconstruction where only limited data are available for problem-specific or task-specific training.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Evolving, Not Training Zero-Shot Reasoning Segmentation Through Evolutionary Prompting

Reasoning Segmentation requires models to interpret complex, context-dependent linguistic queries to achieve pixel-level localization. Current dominant approaches rely heavily on Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) or Reinforcement Learning (RL). However, SFT suffers from catastrophic forgetting and domain dependency, while RL is often hindered by training instability and rigid reliance on predefined reward functions. Although recent training-free methods circumvent these training burdens, they are fundamentally limited by a static inference paradigm. These methods typically rely on a single-pass generate-then-segment chain, which suffers from insufficient reasoning depth and lacks the capability to self-correct linguistic hallucinations or spatial misinterpretations. In this paper, we challenge these limitations and propose EVOL-SAM3, a novel zero-shot framework that reformulates reasoning segmentation as an inference-time evolutionary search process. Instead of relying on a fixed prompt, EVOL-SAM3 maintains a population of prompt hypotheses and iteratively refines them through a Generate-Evaluate-Evolve loop. We introduce a Visual Arena to assess prompt fitness via reference-free pairwise tournaments, and a Semantic Mutation operator to inject diversity and correct semantic errors. Furthermore, a Heterogeneous Arena module integrates geometric priors with semantic reasoning to ensure robust final selection. Extensive experiments demonstrate that EVOL-SAM3 not only substantially outperforms static baselines but also significantly surpasses fully supervised state-of-the-art methods on the challenging ReasonSeg benchmark in a zero-shot setting. The code is available at https //github.com/AHideoKuzeA/Evol-SAM3.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Iterative Deployment Enhances Planning Abilities in Large Language Models

We show that iterative deployment of large language models (LLMs), each fine-tuned on data carefully curated by users from the previous models deployment, can significantly change the properties of the resultant models. By testing this mechanism on various planning domains, we observe substantial improvements in planning skills, with later models displaying emergent generalization by discovering much longer plans than the initial models. We then provide theoretical analysis showing that iterative deployment effectively implements reinforcement learning (RL) training in the outer-loop (i.e. not as part of intentional model training), with an implicit reward function. The connection to RL has two important implications first, for the field of AI safety, as the reward function entailed by repeated deployment is not defined explicitly, and could have unexpected implications to the properties of future model deployments. Second, the mechanism highlighted here can be viewed as an alternative training regime to explicit RL, relying on data curation rather than explicit rewards.

February 04, 2026

paper research

MSACL Multi-Step Actor-Critic Learning with Lyapunov Certificates for Exponential Stabilization

Achieving provable stability in model-free reinforcement learning (RL) remains a challenge, particularly in balancing exploration with rigorous safety. This article introduces MSACL, a framework that integrates exponential stability theory with maximum entropy RL through multi-step Lyapunov certificate learning. Unlike methods relying on complex reward engineering, MSACL utilizes off-policy multi-step data to learn Lyapunov certificates satisfying theoretical stability conditions. By introducing Exponential Stability Labels (ESL) and a $λ$-weighted aggregation mechanism, the framework effectively balances the bias-variance trade-off in multi-step learning. Policy optimization is guided by a stability-aware advantage function, ensuring the learned policy promotes rapid Lyapunov descent. We evaluate MSACL across six benchmarks, including stabilization and nonlinear tracking tasks, demonstrating its superiority over state-of-the-art Lyapunov-based RL algorithms. MSACL achieves exponential stability and rapid convergence under simple rewards, while exhibiting significant robustness to uncertainties and generalization to unseen trajectories. Sensitivity analysis establishes the multi-step horizon $n=20$ as a robust default across diverse systems. By linking Lyapunov theory with off-policy actor-critic frameworks, MSACL provides a foundation for verifiably safe learning-based control. Source code and benchmark environments will be made publicly available.

February 04, 2026

paper research

DarkEQA Assessing Vision-Language Models for Embodied Question Answering in Dimly Lit Indoor Settings

Vision Language Models (VLMs) are increasingly adopted as central reasoning modules for embodied agents. Existing benchmarks evaluate their capabilities under ideal, well-lit conditions, yet robust 24/7 operation demands performance under a wide range of visual degradations, including low-light conditions at night or in dark environments--a core necessity that has been largely overlooked. To address this underexplored challenge, we present DarkEQA, an open-source benchmark for evaluating EQA-relevant perceptual primitives under multi-level low-light conditions. DarkEQA isolates the perception bottleneck by evaluating question answering from egocentric observations under controlled degradations, enabling attributable robustness analysis. A key design feature of DarkEQA is its physical fidelity visual degradations are modeled in linear RAW space, simulating physics-based illumination drop and sensor noise followed by an ISP-inspired rendering pipeline. We demonstrate the utility of DarkEQA by evaluating a wide range of state-of-the-art VLMs and Low-Light Image Enhancement (LLIE) models. Our analysis systematically reveals VLMs limitations when operating under these challenging visual conditions. Project website https //darkeqa-benchmark.github.io/

February 04, 2026

paper research

Parallel Universes, Parallel Languages A Comprehensive Study on Multilingual Counterfactual Example Generation Using Large Language Models

Counterfactuals refer to minimally edited inputs that cause a model s prediction to change, serving as a promising approach to explaining the model s behavior. Large language models (LLMs) excel at generating English counterfactuals and demonstrate multilingual proficiency. However, their effectiveness in generating multilingual counterfactuals remains unclear. To this end, we conduct a comprehensive study on multilingual counterfactuals. We first conduct automatic evaluations on both directly generated counterfactuals in the target languages and those derived via English translation across six languages. Although translation-based counterfactuals offer higher validity than their directly generated counterparts, they demand substantially more modifications and still fall short of matching the quality of the original English counterfactuals. Second, we find the patterns of edits applied to high-resource European-language counterfactuals to be remarkably similar, suggesting that cross-lingual perturbations follow common strategic principles. Third, we identify and categorize four main types of errors that consistently appear in the generated counterfactuals across languages. Finally, we reveal that multilingual counterfactual data augmentation (CDA) yields larger model performance improvements than cross-lingual CDA, especially for lower-resource languages. Yet, the imperfections of the generated counterfactuals limit gains in model performance and robustness.

February 04, 2026

paper research

A Bio-Inspired Self-Healing Framework for Resilient Distributed Computing Systems

Human biological systems sustain life through extraordinary resilience, continually detecting damage, orchestrating targeted responses, and restoring function through self-healing. Inspired by these capabilities, this paper introduces ReCiSt, a bio-inspired agentic self-healing framework designed to achieve resilience in Distributed Computing Continuum Systems (DCCS). Modern DCCS integrate heterogeneous computing resources, ranging from resource-constrained IoT devices to high-performance cloud infrastructures, and their inherent complexity, mobility, and dynamic operating conditions expose them to frequent faults that disrupt service continuity. These challenges underscore the need for scalable, adaptive, and self-regulated resilience strategies. ReCiSt reconstructs the biological phases of Hemostasis, Inflammation, Proliferation, and Remodeling into the computational layers Containment, Diagnosis, Meta-Cognitive, and Knowledge for DCCS. These four layers perform autonomous fault isolation, causal diagnosis, adaptive recovery, and long-term knowledge consolidation through Language Model (LM)-powered agents. These agents interpret heterogeneous logs, infer root causes, refine reasoning pathways, and reconfigure resources with minimal human intervention. The proposed ReCiSt framework is evaluated on public fault datasets using multiple LMs, and no baseline comparison is included due to the scarcity of similar approaches. Nevertheless, our results, evaluated under different LMs, confirm ReCiSt s self-healing capabilities within tens of seconds with minimum of 10% of agent CPU usage. Our results also demonstrated depth of analysis to over come uncertainties and amount of micro-agents invoked to achieve resilience.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Probability-Informed Parking Choice

Current parking navigation systems often underestimate total travel time by failing to account for the time spent searching for a parking space, which significantly affects user experience, mode choice, congestion, and emissions. To address this issue, this paper introduces the probability-aware parking selection problem, which aims to direct drivers to the best parking location rather than straight to their destination. An adaptable dynamic programming framework is proposed for decision-making based on probabilistic information about parking availability at the parking lot level. Closed-form analysis determines when it is optimal to target a specific parking lot or explore alternatives, as well as the expected time cost. Sensitivity analysis and three illustrative cases are examined, demonstrating the model s ability to account for the dynamic nature of parking availability. Acknowledging the financial costs of permanent sensing infrastructure, the paper provides analytical and empirical assessments of errors incurred when leveraging stochastic observations to estimate parking availability. Experiments with real-world data from the US city of Seattle indicate this approach s viability, with mean absolute error decreasing from 7% to below 2% as observation frequency grows. In data-based simulations, probability-aware strategies demonstrate time savings up to 66% relative to probability-unaware baselines, yet still take up to 123% longer than direct-to-destination estimates.

February 04, 2026

paper research

CoCo-Fed A Unified Framework for Efficient Memory and Communication in Federated Learning at the Wireless Edge

The deployment of large-scale neural networks within the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture is pivotal for enabling native edge intelligence. However, this paradigm faces two critical bottlenecks the prohibitive memory footprint required for local training on resource-constrained gNBs, and the saturation of bandwidth-limited backhaul links during the global aggregation of high-dimensional model updates. To address these challenges, we propose CoCo-Fed, a novel Compression and Combination-based Federated learning framework that unifies local memory efficiency and global communication reduction. Locally, CoCo-Fed breaks the memory wall by performing a double-dimension down-projection of gradients, adapting the optimizer to operate on low-rank structures without introducing additional inference parameters/latency. Globally, we introduce a transmission protocol based on orthogonal subspace superposition, where layer-wise updates are projected and superimposed into a single consolidated matrix per gNB, drastically reducing the backhaul traffic. Beyond empirical designs, we establish a rigorous theoretical foundation, proving the convergence of CoCo-Fed even under unsupervised learning conditions suitable for wireless sensing tasks. Extensive simulations on an angle-of-arrival estimation task demonstrate that CoCo-Fed significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in both memory and communication efficiency while maintaining robust convergence under non-IID settings.

February 04, 2026

paper research

HFedMoE Resource-Aware Heterogeneous Federated Learning with Mixture-of-Experts

While federated learning (FL) enables fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs) without compromising data privacy, the substantial size of an LLM renders on-device training impractical for resource-constrained clients, such as mobile devices. Thus, Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) models have emerged as a computation-efficient solution, which activates only a sparse subset of experts during model training to reduce computing burden without sacrificing performance. Though integrating MoE into FL fine-tuning holds significant potential, it still encounters three key challenges i) selecting appropriate experts for clients remains challenging due to the lack of a reliable metric to measure each expert s impact on local fine-tuning performance, ii) the heterogeneous computing resources across clients severely hinder MoE-based LLM fine-tuning, as dynamic expert activations across diverse input samples can overwhelm resource-constrained devices, and iii) client-specific expert subsets and routing preference undermine global aggregation, where misaligned expert updates and inconsistent gating networks in troduce destructive interference. To address these challenges, we propose HFedMoE, a heterogeneous MoE-based FL fine-tuning framework that customizes a subset of experts to each client for computation-efficient LLM fine-tuning. Specifically, HFedMoE identifies the expert importance based on its contributions to fine-tuning performance, and then adaptively selects a subset of experts from an information bottleneck perspective to align with each client s computing budget. A sparsity-aware model aggregation strategy is also designed to aggregate the actively fine-tuned experts and gating parameters with importance weighted contributions. Extensive experiments demonstrate that HFedMoE outperforms state-of-the-art benchmarks in training accuracy and convergence speed.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Attention Demands Focus A Unified View on Attention Allocation

The Transformer architecture, a cornerstone of modern Large Language Models (LLMs), has achieved extraordinary success in sequence modeling, primarily due to its attention mechanism. However, despite its power, the standard attention mechanism is plagued by well-documented issues representational collapse and attention sink. Although prior work has proposed approaches for these issues, they are often studied in isolation, obscuring their deeper connection. In this paper, we present a unified perspective, arguing that both can be traced to a common root -- improper attention allocation. We identify two failure modes 1) Attention Overload, where tokens receive comparable high weights, blurring semantic features that lead to representational collapse; 2) Attention Underload, where no token is semantically relevant, yet attention is still forced to distribute, resulting in spurious focus such as attention sink. Building on this insight, we introduce Lazy Attention, a novel mechanism designed for a more focused attention distribution. To mitigate overload, it employs positional discrimination across both heads and dimensions to sharpen token distinctions. To counteract underload, it incorporates Elastic-Softmax, a modified normalization function that relaxes the standard softmax constraint to suppress attention on irrelevant tokens. Experiments on the FineWeb-Edu corpus, evaluated across nine diverse benchmarks, demonstrate that Lazy Attention successfully mitigates attention sink and achieves competitive performance compared to both standard attention and modern architectures, while reaching up to 59.58% attention sparsity.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Decoupling Amplitude and Phase Attention in the Frequency Domain for RGB-Event Based Visual Object Tracking

Existing RGB-Event visual object tracking approaches primarily rely on conventional feature-level fusion, failing to fully exploit the unique advantages of event cameras. In particular, the high dynamic range and motion-sensitive nature of event cameras are often overlooked, while low-information regions are processed uniformly, leading to unnecessary computational overhead for the backbone network. To address these issues, we propose a novel tracking framework that performs early fusion in the frequency domain, enabling effective aggregation of high-frequency information from the event modality. Specifically, RGB and event modalities are transformed from the spatial domain to the frequency domain via the Fast Fourier Transform, with their amplitude and phase components decoupled. High-frequency event information is selectively fused into RGB modality through amplitude and phase attention, enhancing feature representation while substantially reducing backbone computation. In addition, a motion-guided spatial sparsification module leverages the motion-sensitive nature of event cameras to capture the relationship between target motion cues and spatial probability distribution, filtering out low-information regions and enhancing target-relevant features. Finally, a sparse set of target-relevant features is fed into the backbone network for learning, and the tracking head predicts the final target position. Extensive experiments on three widely used RGB-Event tracking benchmark datasets, including FE108, FELT, and COESOT, demonstrate the high performance and efficiency of our method. The source code of this paper will be released on https //github.com/Event-AHU/OpenEvTracking

February 04, 2026

paper research

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Hierarchical Adaptive Evaluation of LLMs and SAST Tools for CWE Prediction in Python

Large Language Models have become integral to software development, yet they frequently generate vulnerable code. Existing code vulnerability detection benchmarks employ binary classification, lacking the CWE-level specificity required for actionable feedback in iterative correction systems. We present ALPHA (Adaptive Learning via Penalty in Hierarchical Assessment), the first function-level Python benchmark that evaluates both LLMs and SAST tools using hierarchically aware, CWE-specific penalties. ALPHA distinguishes between over-generalisation, over-specification, and lateral errors, reflecting practical differences in diagnostic utility. Evaluating seven LLMs and two SAST tools, we find LLMs substantially outperform SAST, though SAST demonstrates higher precision when detections occur. Critically, prediction consistency varies dramatically across models (8.26%-81.87% agreement), with significant implications for feedback-driven systems. We further outline a pathway for future work incorporating ALPHA penalties into supervised fine-tuning, which could provide principled hierarchy-aware vulnerability detection pending empirical validation.

February 04, 2026

paper research

KGCE Knowledge-Enhanced Dual-Graph Evaluator for Benchmarking Cross-Platform Educational Agents Using Multimodal Language Models

With the rapid adoption of multimodal large language models (MLMs) in autonomous agents, cross-platform task execution capabilities in educational settings have garnered significant attention. However, existing benchmark frameworks still exhibit notable deficiencies in supporting cross-platform tasks in educational contexts, especially when dealing with school-specific software (such as XiaoYa Intelligent Assistant, HuaShi XiaZi, etc.), where the efficiency of agents often significantly decreases due to a lack of understanding of the structural specifics of these private-domain software. Additionally, current evaluation methods heavily rely on coarse-grained metrics like goal orientation or trajectory matching, making it challenging to capture the detailed execution and efficiency of agents in complex tasks. To address these issues, we propose KGCE (Knowledge-Augmented Dual-Graph Evaluator for Cross-Platform Educational Agent Benchmarking with Multimodal Language Models), a novel benchmarking platform that integrates knowledge base enhancement and a dual-graph evaluation framework. We first constructed a dataset comprising 104 education-related tasks, covering Windows, Android, and cross-platform collaborative tasks. KGCE introduces a dual-graph evaluation framework that decomposes tasks into multiple sub-goals and verifies their completion status, providing fine-grained evaluation metrics. To overcome the execution bottlenecks of existing agents in private-domain tasks, we developed an enhanced agent system incorporating a knowledge base specific to school-specific software. The code can be found at https //github.com/Kinginlife/KGCE.

February 04, 2026

paper research

REE-TTT Highly Adaptive Radar Echo Extrapolation Using Test-Time Training

Precipitation nowcasting is critically important for meteorological forecasting. Deep learning-based Radar Echo Extrapolation (REE) has become a predominant nowcasting approach, yet it suffers from poor generalization due to its reliance on high-quality local training data and static model parameters, limiting its applicability across diverse regions and extreme events. To overcome this, we propose REE-TTT, a novel model that incorporates an adaptive Test-Time Training (TTT) mechanism. The core of our model lies in the newly designed Spatio-temporal Test-Time Training (ST-TTT) block, which replaces the standard linear projections in TTT layers with task-specific attention mechanisms, enabling robust adaptation to non-stationary meteorological distributions and thereby significantly enhancing the feature representation of precipitation. Experiments under cross-regional extreme precipitation scenarios demonstrate that REE-TTT substantially outperforms state-of-the-art baseline models in prediction accuracy and generalization, exhibiting remarkable adaptability to data distribution shifts.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Technical Report on K-EXAONE

This technical report presents K-EXAONE, a large-scale multilingual language model developed by LG AI Research. K-EXAONE is built on a Mixture-of-Experts architecture with 236B total parameters, activating 23B parameters during inference. It supports a 256K-token context window and covers six languages Korean, English, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Vietnamese. We evaluate K-EXAONE on a comprehensive benchmark suite spanning reasoning, agentic, general, Korean, and multilingual abilities. Across these evaluations, K-EXAONE demonstrates performance comparable to open-weight models of similar size. K-EXAONE, designed to advance AI for a better life, is positioned as a powerful proprietary AI foundation model for a wide range of industrial and research applications.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Sparse Threats, Focused Defense Robust Reinforcement Learning Aware of Criticality for Safe Autonomous Driving

Reinforcement learning (RL) has shown considerable potential in autonomous driving (AD), yet its vulnerability to perturbations remains a critical barrier to real-world deployment. As a primary countermeasure, adversarial training improves policy robustness by training the AD agent in the presence of an adversary that deliberately introduces perturbations. Existing approaches typically model the interaction as a zero-sum game with continuous attacks. However, such designs overlook the inherent asymmetry between the agent and the adversary and then fail to reflect the sparsity of safety-critical risks, rendering the achieved robustness inadequate for practical AD scenarios. To address these limitations, we introduce criticality-aware robust RL (CARRL), a novel adversarial training approach for handling sparse, safety-critical risks in autonomous driving. CARRL consists of two interacting components a risk exposure adversary (REA) and a risk-targeted robust agent (RTRA). We model the interaction between the REA and RTRA as a general-sum game, allowing the REA to focus on exposing safety-critical failures (e.g., collisions) while the RTRA learns to balance safety with driving efficiency. The REA employs a decoupled optimization mechanism to better identify and exploit sparse safety-critical moments under a constrained budget. However, such focused attacks inevitably result in a scarcity of adversarial data. The RTRA copes with this scarcity by jointly leveraging benign and adversarial experiences via a dual replay buffer and enforces policy consistency under perturbations to stabilize behavior. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach reduces the collision rate by at least 22.66 % across all cases compared to state-of-the-art baseline methods.

February 04, 2026

paper research

EverMemOS A Self-Organizing Memory Operating System for Long-Term Reasoning Tasks

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as long-term interactive agents, yet their limited context windows make it difficult to sustain coherent behavior over extended interactions. Existing memory systems often store isolated records and retrieve fragments, limiting their ability to consolidate evolving user states and resolve conflicts. We introduce EverMemOS, a self-organizing memory operating system that implements an engram-inspired lifecycle for computational memory. Episodic Trace Formation converts dialogue streams into MemCells that capture episodic traces, atomic facts, and time-bounded Foresight signals. Semantic Consolidation organizes MemCells into thematic MemScenes, distilling stable semantic structures and updating user profiles. Reconstructive Recollection performs MemScene-guided agentic retrieval to compose the necessary and sufficient context for downstream reasoning. Experiments on LoCoMo and LongMemEval show that EverMemOS achieves state-of-the-art performance on memory-augmented reasoning tasks. We further report a profile study on PersonaMem v2 and qualitative case studies illustrating chat-oriented capabilities such as user profiling and Foresight. Code is available at https //github.com/EverMind-AI/EverMemOS.

February 04, 2026

paper research

QoE-Driven Coupled Uplink and Downlink Rate Adaptation for 360-Degree Video Live Streaming

360-degree video provides an immersive 360-degree viewing experience and has been widely used in many areas. The 360-degree video live streaming systems involve capturing, compression, uplink (camera to video server) and downlink (video server to user) transmissions. However, few studies have jointly investigated such complex systems, especially the rate adaptation for the coupled uplink and downlink in the 360-degree video streaming under limited bandwidth constraints. In this letter, we propose a quality of experience (QoE)-driven 360-degree video live streaming system, in which a video server performs rate adaptation based on the uplink and downlink bandwidths and information concerning each user s real-time field-of-view (FOV). We formulate it as a nonlinear integer programming problem and propose an algorithm, which combines the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) condition and branch and bound method, to solve it. The numerical results show that the proposed optimization model can improve users QoE significantly in comparison with other baseline schemes.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Button Simulation and Design Using FDVV Models

Designing a push-button with desired sensation and performance is challenging because the mechanical construction must have the right response characteristics. Physical simulation of a button s force-displacement (FD) response has been studied to facilitate prototyping; however, the simulations scope and realism have been limited. In this paper, we extend FD modeling to include vibration (V) and velocity-dependence characteristics (V). The resulting FDVV models better capture tactility characteristics of buttons, including snap. They increase the range of simulated buttons and the perceived realism relative to FD models. The paper also demonstrates methods for obtaining these models, editing them, and simulating accordingly. This end-to-end approach enables the analysis, prototyping, and optimization of buttons, and supports exploring designs that would be hard to implement mechanically.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Prediction Intervals for Synthetic Control Methods

Uncertainty quantification is a fundamental problem in the analysis and interpretation of synthetic control (SC) methods. We develop conditional prediction intervals in the SC framework, and provide conditions under which these intervals offer finite-sample probability guarantees. Our method allows for covariate adjustment and non-stationary data. The construction begins by noting that the statistical uncertainty of the SC prediction is governed by two distinct sources of randomness one coming from the construction of the (likely misspecified) SC weights in the pre-treatment period, and the other coming from the unobservable stochastic error in the post-treatment period when the treatment effect is analyzed. Accordingly, our proposed prediction intervals are constructed taking into account both sources of randomness. For implementation, we propose a simulation-based approach along with finite-sample-based probability bound arguments, naturally leading to principled sensitivity analysis methods. We illustrate the numerical performance of our methods using empirical applications and a small simulation study. texttt{Python}, texttt{R} and texttt{Stata} software packages implementing our methodology are available.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Hash-Based Ray Path Prediction Bypassing BVH Traversal by Leveraging Ray Locality

State-of-the-art ray tracing techniques operate on hierarchical acceleration structures such as BVH trees which wrap objects in a scene into bounding volumes of decreasing sizes. Acceleration structures reduce the amount of ray-scene intersections that a ray has to perform to find the intersecting object. However, we observe a large amount of redundancy when rays are traversing these acceleration structures. While modern acceleration structures explore the spatial organization of the scene, they neglect similarities between rays that traverse the structures and thereby cause redundant traversals. This paper provides a limit study of a new promising technique, Hash-Based Ray Path Prediction (HRPP), which exploits the similarity between rays to predict leaf nodes to avoid redundant acceleration structure traversals. Our data shows that acceleration structure traversal consumes a significant proportion of the ray tracing rendering time regardless of the platform or the target image quality. Our study quantifies unused ray locality and evaluates the theoretical potential for improved ray traversal performance for both coherent and seemingly incoherent rays. We show that HRPP is able to skip, on average, 40% of all hit-all traversal computations.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Minimum Cuts in Surface-Embedded Graphs

We describe algorithms to efficiently compute minimum $(s,t)$-cuts and global minimum cuts of undirected surface-embedded graphs. Given an edge-weighted undirected graph $G$ with $n$ vertices embedded on an orientable surface of genus $g$, our algorithms can solve either problem in $g^{O(g)} n log log n$ or $2^{O(g)} n log n$ time, whichever is better. When $g$ is a constant, our $g^{O(g)} n log log n$ time algorithms match the best running times known for computing minimum cuts in planar graphs. Our algorithms for minimum cuts rely on reductions to the problem of finding a minimum-weight subgraph in a given $ mathbb{Z}_2$-homology class, and we give efficient algorithms for this latter problem as well. If $G$ is embedded on a surface with $b$ boundary components, these algorithms run in $(g + b)^{O(g + b)} n log log n$ and $2^{O(g + b)} n log n$ time. We also prove that finding a minimum-weight subgraph homologous to a single input cycle is NP-hard, showing it is likely impossible to improve upon the exponential dependencies on $g$ for this latter problem.

February 04, 2026

paper research

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Super-Nash Performance A New Benchmark and the Optimin Solution Concept

In this paper, I introduce a novel benchmark in games, super-Nash performance, and a solution concept, optimin, whereby players maximize their minimal payoff under unilateral profitable deviations by other players. Optimin achieves super-Nash performance in that, for every Nash equilibrium, there exists an optimin where each player not only receives but also guarantees super-Nash payoffs under unilateral profitable deviations by others. Further, optimin generalizes Nash equilibrium in n-person constant-sum games and coincides with it when n=2. Finally, optimin is consistent with the direction of non-Nash deviations in games in which cooperation has been extensively studied.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Biologically Inspired LGN-CNN Architecture

In this paper we introduce a biologically inspired Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture called LGN-CNN that has a first convolutional layer composed by a single filter that mimics the role of the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN). The first layer of the neural network shows a rotational symmetric pattern justified by the structure of the net itself that turns up to be an approximation of a Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG). The latter function is in turn a good approximation of the receptive field profiles (RFPs) of the cells in the LGN. The analogy with the visual system is established, emerging directly from the architecture of the neural network. A proof of rotation invariance of the first layer is given on a fixed LGN-CNN architecture and the computational results are shown. Thus, contrast invariance capability of the LGN-CNN is investigated and a comparison between the Retinex effects of the first layer of LGN-CNN and the Retinex effects of a LoG is provided on different images. A statistical study is done on the filters of the second convolutional layer with respect to biological data. In conclusion, the model we have introduced approximates well the RFPs of both LGN and V1 attaining similar behavior as regards long range connections of LGN cells that show Retinex effects.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Sabrina Modeling and Visualizing Economic Data with Incremental Domain Knowledge

Investment planning requires knowledge of the financial landscape on a large scale, both in terms of geo-spatial and industry sector distribution. There is plenty of data available, but it is scattered across heterogeneous sources (newspapers, open data, etc.), which makes it difficult for financial analysts to understand the big picture. In this paper, we present Sabrina, a financial data analysis and visualization approach that incorporates a pipeline for the generation of firm-to-firm financial transaction networks. The pipeline is capable of fusing the ground truth on individual firms in a region with (incremental) domain knowledge on general macroscopic aspects of the economy. Sabrina unites these heterogeneous data sources within a uniform visual interface that enables the visual analysis process. In a user study with three domain experts, we illustrate the usefulness of Sabrina, which eases their analysis process.

February 04, 2026

paper research

An Introduction to Decentralized Stochastic Optimization with Gradient Tracking

Decentralized solutions to finite-sum minimization are of significant importance in many signal processing, control, and machine learning applications. In such settings, the data is distributed over a network of arbitrarily-connected nodes and raw data sharing is prohibitive often due to communication or privacy constraints. In this article, we review decentralized stochastic first-order optimization methods and illustrate some recent improvements based on gradient tracking and variance reduction, focusing particularly on smooth and strongly-convex objective functions. We provide intuitive illustrations of the main technical ideas as well as applications of the algorithms in the context of decentralized training of machine learning models.

February 04, 2026

paper research

The Demise of the Filesystem and Multi-Level Service Architecture

Many astronomy data centres still work on filesystems. Industry has moved on; current practice in computing infrastructure is to achieve Big Data scalability using object stores rather than POSIX file systems. This presents us with opportunities for portability and reuse of software underlying processing and archive systems but it also causes problems for legacy implementations in current data centers.

February 04, 2026

paper research

Virtual Reality Renderings of World Maps Comparing 3D Exocentric Globes, Flat Maps, Egocentric 3D Globes, and Curved Maps

This paper explores different ways to render world-wide geographic maps in virtual reality (VR). We compare (a) a 3D exocentric globe, where the user s viewpoint is outside the globe; (b) a flat map (rendered to a plane in VR); (c) an egocentric 3D globe, with the viewpoint inside the globe; and (d) a curved map, created by projecting the map onto a section of a sphere which curves around the user. In all four visualisations the geographic centre can be smoothly adjusted with a standard handheld VR controller and the user, through a head-tracked headset, can physically move around the visualisation. For distance comparison, exocentric globe is more accurate than egocentric globe and flat map. For area comparison, more time is required with exocentric and egocentric globes than with flat and curved maps. For direction estimation, the exocentric globe is more accurate and faster than the other visual presentations. Our study participants had a weak preference for the exocentric globe. Generally, the curved map had benefits over the flat map. In almost all cases the egocentric globe was found to be the least effective visualisation. Overall, our results provide support for the use of exocentric globes for geographic visualisation in mixed-reality.

February 04, 2026

paper research