Vector Symbolic Architecture (VSA) is emerging in machine learning due to its efficiency, but they are hindered by issues of hyperdimensionality and accuracy. As a promising mitigation, the Low-Dimensional Computing (LDC) method significantly reduces the vector dimension by ~100 times while maintaining accuracy, by employing a gradient-based optimization. Despite its potential, LDC optimization for VSA is still underexplored. Our investigation into vector updates underscores the importance of stable, adaptive dynamics in LDC training. We also reveal the overlooked yet critical roles of batch normalization (BN) and knowledge distillation (KD) in standard approaches. Besides the accuracy boost, BN does not add computational overhead during inference, and KD significantly enhances inference confidence. Through extensive experiments and ablation studies across multiple benchmarks, we provide a thorough evaluation of our approach and extend the interpretability of binary neural network optimization similar to LDC, previously unaddressed in BNN literature.

In this work, we study the training and generalization performance of two-layer neural networks (NNs) after one gradient descent step under structured data modeled by Gaussian mixtures. While previous research has extensively analyzed this model under isotropic data assumption, such simplifications overlook the complexities inherent in real-world datasets. Our work addresses this limitation by analyzing two-layer NNs under Gaussian mixture data assumption in the asymptotically proportional limit, where the input dimension, number of hidden neurons, and sample size grow with finite ratios. We characterize the training and generalization errors by leveraging recent advancements in Gaussian universality. Specifically, we prove that a high-order polynomial model performs equivalent to the nonlinear neural networks under certain conditions. The degree of the equivalent model is intricately linked to both the "data spread" and the learning rate employed during one gradient step. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate the equivalence between the original model and its polynomial counterpart across various regression and classification tasks. Additionally, we explore how different properties of Gaussian mixtures affect learning outcomes. Finally, we illustrate experimental results on Fashion-MNIST classification, indicating that our findings can translate to realistic data.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly advanced natural language processing with exceptional task generalization capabilities. Low-Rank Adaption (LoRA) offers a cost-effective fine-tuning solution, freezing the original model parameters and training only lightweight, low-rank adapter matrices. However, the memory footprint of LoRA is largely dominated by the original model parameters. To mitigate this, we propose LoRAM, a memory-efficient LoRA training scheme founded on the intuition that many neurons in over-parameterized LLMs have low training utility but are essential for inference. LoRAM presents a unique twist: it trains on a pruned (small) model to obtain pruned low-rank matrices, which are then recovered and utilized with the original (large) model for inference. Additionally, minimal-cost continual pre-training, performed by the model publishers in advance, aligns the knowledge discrepancy between pruned and original models. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the efficacy of LoRAM across various pruning strategies and downstream tasks. For a model with 70 billion parameters, LoRAM enables training on a GPU with only 20G HBM, replacing an A100-80G GPU for LoRA training and 15 GPUs for full fine-tuning. Specifically, QLoRAM implemented by structured pruning combined with 4-bit quantization, for LLaMA-3.1-70B (LLaMA-2-70B), reduces the parameter storage cost that dominates the memory usage in low-rank matrix training by 15.81$\times$ (16.95$\times$), while achieving dominant performance gains over both the original LLaMA-3.1-70B (LLaMA-2-70B) and LoRA-trained LLaMA-3.1-8B (LLaMA-2-13B). Code is available at https://github.com/junzhang-zj/LoRAM.

As the utilization of language models in interdisciplinary, human-centered studies grow, the expectation of model capabilities continues to evolve. Beyond excelling at conventional tasks, models are recently expected to perform well on user-centric measurements involving confidence and human (dis)agreement -- factors that reflect subjective preferences. While modeling of subjectivity plays an essential role in cognitive science and has been extensively studied, it remains under-explored within the NLP community. In light of this gap, we explore how language models can harness subjectivity by conducting comprehensive experiments and analysis across various scenarios using both fine-tuned models and prompt-based large language models (LLMs). Our quantitative and qualitative experimental results indicate that existing post-hoc calibration approaches often fail to produce satisfactory results. However, our findings reveal that personality traits and demographical information are critical for measuring subjectivity. Furthermore, our in-depth analysis offers valuable insights for future research and development in the interdisciplinary studies of NLP and cognitive science.

Deep learning (DL) has emerged as a powerful tool for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) ship classification. This survey comprehensively analyzes the diverse DL techniques employed in this domain. We identify critical trends and challenges, highlighting the importance of integrating handcrafted features, utilizing public datasets, data augmentation, fine-tuning, explainability techniques, and fostering interdisciplinary collaborations to improve DL model performance. This survey establishes a first-of-its-kind taxonomy for categorizing relevant research based on DL models, handcrafted feature use, SAR attribute utilization, and the impact of fine-tuning. We discuss the methodologies used in SAR ship classification tasks and the impact of different techniques. Finally, the survey explores potential avenues for future research, including addressing data scarcity, exploring novel DL architectures, incorporating interpretability techniques, and establishing standardized performance metrics. By addressing these challenges and leveraging advancements in DL, researchers can contribute to developing more accurate and efficient ship classification systems, ultimately enhancing maritime surveillance and related applications.

Accurate fine-grained geospatial scene classification using remote sensing imagery is essential for a wide range of applications. However, existing approaches often rely on manually zooming remote sensing images at different scales to create typical scene samples. This approach fails to adequately support the fixed-resolution image interpretation requirements in real-world scenarios. To address this limitation, we introduce the Million-scale finE-grained geospatial scEne classification dataseT (MEET), which contains over 1.03 million zoom-free remote sensing scene samples, manually annotated into 80 fine-grained categories. In MEET, each scene sample follows a scene-inscene layout, where the central scene serves as the reference, and auxiliary scenes provide crucial spatial context for finegrained classification. Moreover, to tackle the emerging challenge of scene-in-scene classification, we present the Context-Aware Transformer (CAT), a model specifically designed for this task, which adaptively fuses spatial context to accurately classify the scene samples. CAT adaptively fuses spatial context to accurately classify the scene samples by learning attentional features that capture the relationships between the center and auxiliary scenes. Based on MEET, we establish a comprehensive benchmark for fine-grained geospatial scene classification, evaluating CAT against 11 competitive baselines. The results demonstrate that CAT significantly outperforms these baselines, achieving a 1.88% higher balanced accuracy (BA) with the Swin-Large backbone, and a notable 7.87% improvement with the Swin-Huge backbone. Further experiments validate the effectiveness of each module in CAT and show the practical applicability of CAT in the urban functional zone mapping. The source code and dataset will be publicly available at https://jerrywyn.github.io/project/MEET.html.

Many real-world data, such as recommendation data and temporal graphs, can be represented as incomplete sparse tensors where most entries are unobserved. For such sparse tensors, identifying the top-k higher-order interactions that are most likely to occur among unobserved ones is crucial. Tensor factorization (TF) has gained significant attention in various tensor-based applications, serving as an effective method for finding these top-k potential interactions. However, existing TF methods primarily focus on effectively fusing latent vectors of entities, which limits their expressiveness. Since most entities in sparse tensors have only a few interactions, their latent representations are often insufficiently trained. In this paper, we propose TCN, an accurate and compatible tensor convolutional network that integrates seamlessly with existing TF methods for predicting higher-order interactions. We design a highly effective encoder to generate expressive latent vectors of entities. To achieve this, we propose to (1) construct a graph structure derived from a sparse tensor and (2) develop a relation-aware encoder, TCN, that learns latent representations of entities by leveraging the graph structure. Since TCN complements traditional TF methods, we seamlessly integrate TCN with existing TF methods, enhancing the performance of predicting top-k interactions. Extensive experiments show that TCN integrated with a TF method outperforms competitors, including TF methods and a hyperedge prediction method. Moreover, TCN is broadly compatible with various TF methods and GNNs (Graph Neural Networks), making it a versatile solution.

Advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have increased the performance of different natural language understanding as well as generation tasks. Although LLMs have breached the state-of-the-art performance in various tasks, they often reflect different forms of bias present in the training data. In the light of this perceived limitation, we provide a unified evaluation of benchmarks using a set of representative LLMs that cover different forms of biases starting from physical characteristics to socio-economic categories. Moreover, we propose five prompting approaches to carry out the bias detection task across different aspects of bias. Further, we formulate three research questions to gain valuable insight in detecting biases in LLMs using different approaches and evaluation metrics across benchmarks. The results indicate that each of the selected LLMs suffer from one or the other form of bias with the LLaMA3.1-8B model being the least biased. Finally, we conclude the paper with the identification of key challenges and possible future directions.

In recent years, the segmentation of short molecular trajectories with varying diffusive properties has drawn particular attention of researchers, since it allows studying the dynamics of a particle. In the past decade, machine learning methods have shown highly promising results, also in changepoint detection and segmentation tasks. Here, we introduce a novel iterative method to identify the changepoints in a molecular trajectory, i.e., frames, where the diffusive behavior of a particle changes. A trajectory in our case follows a fractional Brownian motion and we estimate the diffusive properties of the trajectories. The proposed BI-ADD combines unsupervised and supervised learning methods to detect the changepoints. Our approach can be used for the analysis of molecular trajectories at the individual level and also be extended to multiple particle tracking, which is an important challenge in fundamental biology. We validated BI-ADD in various scenarios within the framework of the AnDi2 Challenge 2024 dedicated to single particle tracking. Our method is implemented in Python and is publicly available for research purposes.

The rapid growth of the global population and the continuous decline in cultivable land pose significant threats to food security. This challenge worsens as climate change further reduces the availability of farmland. Soilless agriculture, such as hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics, offers a sustainable solution by enabling efficient crop cultivation in controlled environments. The integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) with smart precision farming improves resource efficiency, automates environmental control, and ensures stable and high-yield crop production. IoT-enabled smart farming systems utilize real-time monitoring, data-driven decision-making, and automation to optimize water and nutrient usage while minimizing human intervention. This paper explores the opportunities and challenges of IoT-based soilless farming, highlighting its role in sustainable agriculture, urban farming, and global food security. These advanced farming methods ensure greater productivity, resource conservation, and year-round cultivation. However, they also face challenges such as high initial investment, technological dependency, and energy consumption. Through a comprehensive study, bibliometric analysis, and comparative analysis, this research highlights current trends and research gaps. It also outlines future directions for researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to drive innovation and scalability in IoT-driven soilless agriculture. By emphasizing the benefits of vertical farming and Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)-enabled soilless techniques, this paper supports informed decision-making to address food security challenges and promote sustainable agricultural innovations.