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Causal analysis of Covid-19 spread in Germany

Neural Information Processing Systems

We loose a strictly formulated assumption for a causal feature selection method for time series data, robust to latent confounders, which we subsequently apply on Covid-19 case numbers.


The Effects of Flipped Classrooms in Higher Education: A Causal Machine Learning Analysis

Czarnowske, Daniel, Heiss, Florian, Schmitz, Theresa M. A., Stammann, Amrei

arXiv.org Machine Learning

This study uses double/debiased machine learning (DML) to evaluate the impact of transitioning from lecture-based blended teaching to a flipped classroom concept. Our findings indicate effects on students' self-conception, procrastination, and enjoyment. We do not find significant positive effects on exam scores, passing rates, or knowledge retention. This can be explained by the insufficient use of the instructional approach that we can identify with uniquely detailed usage data and highlights the need for additional teaching strategies. Methodologically, we propose a powerful DML approach that acknowledges the latent structure inherent in Likert scale variables and, hence, aligns with psychometric principles.


RoGER-SLAM: A Robust Gaussian Splatting SLAM System for Noisy and Low-light Environment Resilience

Yin, Huilin, Yang, Zhaolin, Zhang, Linchuan, Rigoll, Gerhard, Betz, Johannes

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Abstract--The reliability of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is severely constrained in environments where visual inputs suffer from noise and low illumination. Although recent 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) based SLAM frameworks achieve high-fidelity mapping under clean conditions, they remain vulnerable to compounded degradations that degrade mapping and tracking performance. A key observation underlying our work is that the original 3DGS rendering pipeline inherently behaves as an implicit low-pass filter, attenuating high-frequency noise but also risking over-smoothing. Building on this insight, we propose RoGER-SLAM, a robust 3DGS SLAM system tailored for noise and low-light resilience. The framework integrates three innovations: a Structure-Preserving Robust Fusion (SP-RoFusion) mechanism that couples rendered appearance, depth, and edge cues; an adaptive tracking objective with residual balancing regularization; and a Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP)-based enhancement module, selectively activated under compounded degradations to restore semantic and structural fidelity. Comprehensive experiments on Replica, TUM, and real-world sequences show that RoGER-SLAM consistently improves trajectory accuracy and reconstruction quality compared with other 3DGS-SLAM systems, especially under adverse imaging conditions. IMUL T ANEOUS Localization and Mapping (SLAM) persists as a foundational capability for autonomous systems operating in unstructured environments, with mission-critical applications in robotics, augmented reality, and autonomous driving. With the advancement of SLAM research, the focus has gradually shifted beyond localization accuracy toward achieving photorealistic and structurally consistent map reconstruction. In this context, neural rendering techniques such as Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) [1] have demonstrated impressive photorealistic reconstruction capabilities by representing scenes as continuous volumetric fields. However, NeRF-based SLAM approaches [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] often suffer from high computational cost, slow convergence and weak structural regularization, which limit their applicability in real-time and degraded scenarios. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 62433014 and No.62133011.


DemandCast: Global hourly electricity demand forecasting

Steijn, Kevin, Goli, Vamsi Priya, Antonini, Enrico

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper presents a machine learning framework for electricity demand forecasting across diverse geographical regions using the gradient boosting algorithm XGBoost. The model integrates historical electricity demand and comprehensive weather and socioeconomic variables to predict normalized electricity demand profiles. To enable robust training and evaluation, we developed a large-scale dataset spanning multiple years and countries, applying a temporal data-splitting strategy that ensures benchmarking of out-of-sample performance. Our approach delivers accurate and scalable demand forecasts, providing valuable insights for energy system planners and policymakers as they navigate the challenges of the global energy transition.



Towards Structured Knowledge: Advancing Triple Extraction from Regional Trade Agreements using Large Language Models

Nandini, Durgesh, Koch, Rebekka, Schoenfeld, Mirco

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This study investigates the effectiveness of Large Language Models (LLMs) for the extraction of structured knowledge in the form of Subject-Predicate-Object triples. We apply the setup for the domain of Economics application. The findings can be applied to a wide range of scenarios, including the creation of economic trade knowledge graphs from natural language legal trade agreement texts. As a use case, we apply the model to regional trade agreement texts to extract trade-related information triples. In particular, we explore the zero-shot, one-shot and few-shot prompting techniques, incorporating positive and negative examples, and evaluate their performance based on quantitative and qualitative metrics. Specifically, we used Llama 3.1 model to process the unstructured regional trade agreement texts and extract triples. We discuss key insights, challenges, and potential future directions, emphasizing the significance of language models in economic applications.


9 Appendix Supplementary material for the paper Causal analysis of 19 spread in Germany

Neural Information Processing Systems

W in V, W is independent of V\ ( Descendants(W) Parents( W)) given Parents (W) . As expected we see that the number of detected causes by Granger is multiple times more than those of SyPI; in most cases Granger detects as causes all the candidate states. On the other hand, SyPI does not suffer from such problems even when there are latent confounders. Finally, in the third column, we report the detected distant causes. Strict thresholds (the default of SyPI method) are used for the analysis.