Vision Language Models (VLMs) are pivotal for advancing perception in intelligent agents. Yet, evaluation of VLMs remains limited to predominantly English-centric benchmarks in which the image-text pairs comprise short texts. To evaluate VLM fine-grained abilities, in four languages under long-text settings, we introduce a novel multilingual benchmark VLURes featuring eight vision-and-language tasks, and a pioneering unrelatedness task, to probe the fine-grained Visual and Linguistic Understanding capabilities of VLMs across English, Japanese, and low-resource languages, Swahili, and Urdu. Our datasets, curated from web resources in the target language, encompass ten diverse image categories and rich textual context, introducing valuable vision-language resources for Swahili and Urdu. By prompting VLMs to generate responses and rationales, evaluated automatically and by native speakers, we uncover performance disparities across languages and tasks critical to intelligent agents, such as object recognition, scene understanding, and relationship understanding. We conducted evaluations of ten VLMs with VLURes. The best performing model, GPT-4o, achieves an overall accuracy of 90.8% and lags human performance by 6.7%, though the gap is larger for open-source models. The gap highlights VLURes' critical role in developing intelligent agents to tackle multi-modal visual reasoning.

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is essential for diagnosing conditions such as glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and age-related macular degeneration. Accurate retinal layer segmentation enables quantitative biomarkers critical for clinical decision-making, but manual segmentation is time-consuming and variable, while conventional deep learning models often lack interpretability. This work proposes an improved SegNet-based deep learning framework for automated and interpretable retinal layer segmentation. Architectural innovations, including modified pooling strategies, enhance feature extraction from noisy OCT images, while a hybrid loss function combining categorical cross-entropy and Dice loss improves performance for thin and imbalanced retinal layers. Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM) is integrated to provide visual explanations, allowing clinical validation of model decisions. Trained and validated on the Duke OCT dataset, the framework achieved 95.77% validation accuracy, a Dice coefficient of 0.9446, and a Jaccard Index (IoU) of 0.8951. Class-wise results confirmed robust performance across most layers, with challenges remaining for thinner boundaries. Grad-CAM visualizations highlighted anatomically relevant regions, aligning segmentation with clinical biomarkers and improving transparency. By combining architectural improvements, a customized hybrid loss, and explainable AI, this study delivers a high-performing SegNet-based framework that bridges the gap between accuracy and interpretability. The approach offers strong potential for standardizing OCT analysis, enhancing diagnostic efficiency, and fostering clinical trust in AI-driven ophthalmic tools.

We study a sequential resource allocation problem where a decision maker selects subsets of agents at each period to maximize overall outcomes without prior knowledge of individual-level effects. Our framework applies to settings such as community health interventions, targeted digital advertising, and workforce retention programs, where intervention effects evolve dynamically. Agents may exhibit habituation (diminished response from frequent selection) or recovery (enhanced response from infrequent selection). The technical challenge centers on nonstationary reward distributions that lead to changing intervention effects over time. The problem requires balancing two key competing objectives: heterogeneous individual rewards and the exploration-exploitation tradeoff in terms of learning for improved future decisions as opposed to maximizing immediate outcomes. Our contribution introduces the first framework incorporating this form of nonstationary rewards in the combinatorial multi-armed bandit literature. We develop algorithms with theoretical guarantees on dynamic regret and demonstrate practical efficacy through a diabetes intervention case study. Our personalized community intervention algorithm achieved up to three times as much improvement in program enrollment compared to baseline approaches, validating the framework's potential for real-world applications. This work bridges theoretical advances in adaptive learning with practical challenges in population-level behavioral change interventions.

SMS enabled fraud is of great concern globally. Building classifiers based on machine learning for SMS fraud requires the use of suitable datasets for model training and validation. Most research has centred on the use of datasets of SMSs in English. This paper introduces a first dataset for SMS fraud detection in Chichewa, a major language in Africa, and reports on experiments with machine learning algorithms for classifying SMSs in Chichewa as fraud or non-fraud. We answer the broader research question of how feasible it is to develop machine learning classification models for Chichewa SMSs. To do that, we created three datasets. A small dataset of SMS in Chichewa was collected through primary research from a segment of the young population. We applied a label-preserving text transformations to increase its size. The enlarged dataset was translated into English using two approaches: human translation and machine translation. The Chichewa and the translated datasets were subjected to machine classification using random forest and logistic regression. Our findings indicate that both models achieved a promising accuracy of over 96% on the Chichewa dataset. There was a drop in performance when moving from the Chichewa to the translated dataset. This highlights the importance of data preprocessing, especially in multilingual or cross-lingual NLP tasks, and shows the challenges of relying on machine-translated text for training machine learning models. Our results underscore the importance of developing language specific models for SMS fraud detection to optimise accuracy and performance. Since most machine learning models require data preprocessing, it is essential to investigate the impact of the reliance on English-specific tools for data preprocessing.

The research related to digital twins has been increasing in recent years. Besides the mirroring of the physical word into the digital, there is the need of providing services related to the data collected and transferred to the virtual world. One of these services is the forecasting of physical part future behavior, that could lead to applications, like preventing harmful events or designing improvements to get better performance. One strategy used to predict any system operation it is the use of time series models like ARIMA or LSTM, and improvements were implemented using these algorithms. Recently, deep learning techniques based on generative models such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have been proposed to create time series and the use of LSTM has gained more relevance in time series forecasting, but both have limitations that restrict the forecasting results. Another issue found in the literature is the challenge of handling multivariate environments/applications in time series generation. Therefore, new methods need to be studied in order to fill these gaps and, consequently, provide better resources for creating useful digital twins. In this proposal, it is going to be studied the integration of a BiLSTM layer with a time series obtained by GAN in order to improve the forecasting of all the features provided by the dataset in terms of accuracy and, consequently, improving behaviour prediction.

This paper introduces Self-aware Knowledge Retrieval (SeaKR), a novel adaptive RAG model that extracts self-aware uncertainty of LLMs from their internal states. SeaKR activates retrieval when the LLMs present high self-aware uncertainty for generation. To effectively integrate retrieved knowledge snippets, SeaKR re-ranks them based on LLM's self-aware uncertainty to preserve the snippet that reduces their uncertainty to the utmost. To facilitate solving complex tasks that require multiple retrievals, SeaKR utilizes their self-aware uncertainty to choose among different reasoning strategies. Our experiments on both complex and simple Question Answering datasets show that SeaKR outperforms existing adaptive RAG methods. We release our code at https://github.com/THU-KEG/SeaKR.

Glaucoma is a chronic eye disease characterized by optic neuropathy, leading to irreversible vision loss. It progresses gradually, often remaining undiagnosed until advanced stages. Early detection is crucial to monitor atrophy and develop treatment strategies to prevent further vision impairment. Data-centric methods have enabled computer-aided algorithms for precise glaucoma diagnosis. In this study, we use deep learning models to identify complex disease traits and progression criteria, detecting subtle changes indicative of glaucoma. We explore the structure-function relationship in glaucoma progression and predict functional impairment from structural eye deterioration. We analyze statistical and machine learning methods, including deep learning techniques with optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans for accurate progression prediction. Addressing challenges like age variability, data imbalances, and noisy labels, we develop novel semi-supervised time-series algorithms: 1. Weakly-Supervised Time-Series Learning: We create a CNN-LSTM model to encode spatiotemporal features from OCT scans. This approach uses age-related progression and positive-unlabeled data to establish robust pseudo-progression criteria, bypassing gold-standard labels. 2. Semi-Supervised Time-Series Learning: Using labels from Guided Progression Analysis (GPA) in a contrastive learning scheme, the CNN-LSTM architecture learns from potentially mislabeled data to improve prediction accuracy. Our methods outperform conventional and state-of-the-art techniques.

Precis: A hybrid deep-learning model combines NFL reflectance and other OCT parameters to improve glaucoma diagnosis. Objective: To investigate if a deep learning model could be used to combine nerve fiber layer (NFL) reflectance and other OCT parameters for glaucoma diagnosis. Patients and Methods: This is a prospective observational study where of 106 normal subjects and 164 perimetric glaucoma (PG) patients. Peripapillary NFL reflectance map, NFL thickness map, optic head analysis of disc, and macular ganglion cell complex thickness were obtained using spectral domain OCT. A hybrid deep learning model combined a fully connected network (FCN) and a convolution neural network (CNN) to develop and combine those OCT maps and parameters to distinguish normal and PG eyes. Two deep learning models were compared based on whether the NFL reflectance map was used as part of the input or not. Results: The hybrid deep learning model with reflectance achieved 0.909 sensitivity at 99% specificity and 0.926 at 95%. The overall accuracy was 0.948 with 0.893 sensitivity and 1.000 specificity, and the AROC was 0.979, which is significantly better than the logistic regression models (p < 0.001). The second best model is the hybrid deep learning model w/o reflectance, which also had significantly higher AROC than logistic regression models (p < 0.001). Logistic regression with reflectance model had slightly higher AROC or sensitivity than the other logistic regression model without reflectance (p = 0.024). Conclusions: Hybrid deep learning model significantly improved the diagnostic accuracy, without or without NFL reflectance. Hybrid deep learning model, combining reflectance/NFL thickness/GCC thickness/ONH parameter, may be a practical model for glaucoma screen purposes.

The Adam optimization method has achieved remarkable success in addressing contemporary challenges in stochastic optimization. This method falls within the realm of adaptive sub-gradient techniques, yet the underlying geometric principles guiding its performance have remained shrouded in mystery, and have long confounded researchers. In this paper, we introduce GeoAdaLer (Geometric Adaptive Learner), a novel adaptive learning method for stochastic gradient descent optimization, which draws from the geometric properties of the optimization landscape. Beyond emerging as a formidable contender, the proposed method extends the concept of adaptive learning by introducing a geometrically inclined approach that enhances the interpretability and effectiveness in complex optimization scenarios.

$\bf{Purpose}$: To describe the 3D structural changes in both connective and neural tissues of the optic nerve head (ONH) that occur concurrently at different stages of glaucoma using traditional and AI-driven approaches. $\bf{Methods}$: We included 213 normal, 204 mild glaucoma (mean deviation [MD] $\ge$ -6.00 dB), 118 moderate glaucoma (MD of -6.01 to -12.00 dB), and 118 advanced glaucoma patients (MD < -12.00 dB). All subjects had their ONHs imaged in 3D with Spectralis optical coherence tomography. To describe the 3D structural phenotype of glaucoma as a function of severity, we used two different approaches: (1) We extracted human-defined 3D structural parameters of the ONH including retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness, lamina cribrosa (LC) shape and depth at different stages of glaucoma; (2) we also employed a geometric deep learning method (i.e. PointNet) to identify the most important 3D structural features that differentiate ONHs from different glaucoma severity groups without any human input. $\bf{Results}$: We observed that the majority of ONH structural changes occurred in the early glaucoma stage, followed by a plateau effect in the later stages. Using PointNet, we also found that 3D ONH structural changes were present in both neural and connective tissues. In both approaches, we observed that structural changes were more prominent in the superior and inferior quadrant of the ONH, particularly in the RNFL, the prelamina, and the LC. As the severity of glaucoma increased, these changes became more diffuse (i.e. widespread), particularly in the LC. $\bf{Conclusions}$: In this study, we were able to uncover complex 3D structural changes of the ONH in both neural and connective tissues as a function of glaucoma severity. We hope to provide new insights into the complex pathophysiology of glaucoma that might help clinicians in their daily clinical care.