We propose mesh-free fluid simulations that exploit a kinematic neural basis for velocity fields represented by an MLP. We design a set of losses that ensures that these neural bases approximate fundamental physical properties such as orthogonality, divergence-free, boundary alignment, and smoothness. Our neural bases can then be used to fit an input sketch of a flow, which will inherit the same fundamental properties from the bases. We then can animate such flow in real-time using standard time integrators. Our neural bases can accommodate different domains, moving boundaries, and naturally extend to three dimensions.

A recent trend in online algorithms has seen the use of future predictions generated by ML techniques to bypass pessimistic worst-case lower bounds.

The assignment of bounded resources to several agents under some notions of fairness is a topic studied in networking, operations research, game theory, and economic theory.

Thompson sampling (TS) is an effective method to explore parametric uncertainties and can therefore be used for active learning-based controller design. However, TS relies on finite parametric representations, which limits its applicability to more general spaces, which are more commonly encountered in control system design. To address this issue, this work pro poses a parameterization method for control law learning using reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces and designs a data-driven active learning control approach. Specifically, the proposed method treats the control law as an element in a function space, allowing the design of control laws without imposing restrictions on the system structure or the form of the controller. A TS framework is proposed in this work to explore potential optimal control laws, and the convergence guarantees are further provided for the learning process. Theoretical analysis shows that the proposed method learns the relationship between control laws and closed-loop performance metrics at an exponential rate, and the upper bound of control regret is also derived. Numerical experiments on controlling unknown nonlinear systems validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

The widespread adoption of smartphones and smart wearable devices has led to the widespread use of Centralized Federated Learning (CFL) for training powerful machine learning models while preserving data privacy. However, CFL faces limitations due to its overreliance on a central server, which impacts latency and system robustness. Decentralized Federated Learning (DFL) is introduced to address these challenges. It facilitates direct collaboration among participating devices without relying on a central server. Each device can independently connect with other devices and share model parameters. This work explores crucial factors influencing the convergence and generalization capacity of DFL models, emphasizing network topologies, non-IID data distribution, and training strategies. We first derive the convergence rate of different DFL model deployment strategies. Then, we comprehensively analyze various network topologies (e.g., linear, ring, star, and mesh) with different degrees of non-IID data and evaluate them over widely adopted machine learning models (e.g., classical, deep neural networks, and Large Language Models) and real-world datasets. The results reveal that models converge to the optimal one for IID data. However, the convergence rate is inversely proportional to the degree of non-IID data distribution. Our findings will serve as valuable guidelines for designing effective DFL model deployments in practical applications.

Boosting is a key method in statistical learning, allowing for converting weak learners into strong ones. While well studied in the realizable case, the statistical properties of weak-to-strong learning remains less understood in the agnostic setting, where there are no assumptions on the distribution of the labels. In this work, we propose a new agnostic boosting algorithm with substantially improved sample complexity compared to prior works under very general assumptions. Our approach is based on a reduction to the realizable case, followed by a margin-based filtering step to select high-quality hypotheses. We conjecture that the error rate achieved by our proposed method is optimal up to logarithmic factors.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant promise in automating software development tasks, yet their capabilities with respect to software design tasks remains largely unclear. This study investigates the capabilities of an LLM in understanding, reproducing, and generating structures within the complex VIPER architecture, a design pattern for iOS applications. We leverage Bloom's taxonomy to develop a comprehensive evaluation framework to assess the LLM's performance across different cognitive domains such as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Experimental results, using ChatGPT 4 Turbo 2024-04-09, reveal that the LLM excelled in higher-order tasks like evaluating and creating, but faced challenges with lower-order tasks requiring precise retrieval of architectural details. These findings highlight both the potential of LLMs to reduce development costs and the barriers to their effective application in real-world software design scenarios. This study proposes a benchmark format for assessing LLM capabilities in software architecture, aiming to contribute toward more robust and accessible AI-driven development tools.

Context: A deeper understanding of human factors in software engineering (SE) is essential for improving team collaboration, decision-making, and productivity. Communication channels like code reviews and chats provide insights into developers' psychological and emotional states. While large language models excel at text analysis, they often lack transparency and precision. Psycholinguistic tools like Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) offer clearer, interpretable insights into cognitive and emotional processes exhibited in text. Despite its wide use in SE research, no comprehensive review of LIWC's use has been conducted. Objective: We examine the importance of psycholinguistic tools, particularly LIWC, and provide a thorough analysis of its current and potential future applications in SE research. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of six prominent databases, identifying 43 SE-related papers using LIWC. Our analysis focuses on five research questions. Results: Our findings reveal a wide range of applications, including analyzing team communication to detect developer emotions and personality, developing ML models to predict deleted Stack Overflow posts, and more recently comparing AI-generated and human-written text. LIWC has been primarily used with data from project management platforms (e.g., GitHub) and Q&A forums (e.g., Stack Overflow). Key BSE concepts include Communication, Organizational Climate, and Positive Psychology. 26 of 43 papers did not formally evaluate LIWC. Concerns were raised about some limitations, including difficulty handling SE-specific vocabulary. Conclusion: We highlight the potential of psycholinguistic tools and their limitations, and present new use cases for advancing the research of human factors in SE (e.g., bias in human-LLM conversations).