This paper introduces BSPA, a parallel algorithm that leverages beam search to address the two-dimensional strip packing problem. The study begins with a comprehensive review of existing approaches and methodologies, followed by a detailed presentation of the BSPA algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. To facilitate further research, both the code and datasets are publicly available.

Cis-regulatory elements (CREs), such as promoters and enhancers, are relatively short DNA sequences that directly regulate gene expression. The fitness of CREs, measured by their ability to modulate gene expression, highly depends on the nucleotide sequences, especially specific motifs known as transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs). Designing high-fitness CREs is crucial for therapeutic and bioengineering applications. Current CRE design methods are limited by two major drawbacks: (1) they typically rely on iterative optimization strategies that modify existing sequences and are prone to local optima, and (2) they lack the guidance of biological prior knowledge in sequence optimization. In this paper, we address these limitations by proposing a generative approach that leverages reinforcement learning (RL) to fine-tune a pre-trained autoregressive (AR) model. Our method incorporates data-driven biological priors by deriving computational inference-based rewards that simulate the addition of activator TFBSs and removal of repressor TFBSs, which are then integrated into the RL process. We evaluate our method on promoter design tasks in two yeast media conditions and enhancer design tasks for three human cell types, demonstrating its ability to generate high-fitness CREs while maintaining sequence diversity. The code is available at https://github.com/yangzhao1230/TACO.

Motivation: Despite recent advancements in semantic representation driven by pre-trained and large-scale language models, addressing long tail challenges in multi-label text classification remains a significant issue. Long tail challenges have persistently posed difficulties in accurately classifying less frequent labels. Current approaches often focus on improving text semantics while neglecting the crucial role of label relationships. Results: This paper introduces LabelCoRank, a novel approach inspired by ranking principles. LabelCoRank leverages label co-occurrence relationships to refine initial label classifications through a dual-stage reranking process. The first stage uses initial classification results to form a preliminary ranking. In the second stage, a label co-occurrence matrix is utilized to rerank the preliminary results, enhancing the accuracy and relevance of the final classifications. By integrating the reranked label representations as additional text features, LabelCoRank effectively mitigates long tail issues in multi-labeltext classification. Experimental evaluations on popular datasets including MAG-CS, PubMed, and AAPD demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of LabelCoRank.

The growing interest in hypergraph neural networks (HGNNs) is driven by their capacity to capture the complex relationships and patterns within hypergraph structured data across various domains, including computer vision, complex networks, and natural language processing. This paper comprehensively reviews recent advances in HGNNs and presents a taxonomy of mainstream models based on their architectures: hypergraph convolutional networks (HGCNs), hypergraph attention networks (HGATs), hypergraph autoencoders (HGAEs), hypergraph recurrent networks (HGRNs), and deep hypergraph generative models (DHGGMs). For each category, we delve into its practical applications, mathematical mechanisms, literature contributions, and open problems. Finally, we discuss some common challenges and promising research directions.This paper aspires to be a helpful resource that provides guidance for future research and applications of HGNNs.

Embedding models, which transform inputs into dense vector representations, are pivotal for capturing semantic information across various domains and modalities. Text embedding models represent words and sentences as vectors, strategically positioning semantically similar texts in close proximity within the embedding space (Gao et al., 2021; Le and Mikolov, 2014; Reimers and Gurevych, 2019). Recent research has focused on developing general-purpose embedding models capable of excelling in diverse downstream tasks, including information retrieval, clustering, and classification (Cer et al., 2018; Muennighoff et al., 2023). Leveraging their vast pre-training knowledge, large language models (LLMs) have emerged as a promising avenue for constructing such general-purpose embedding models, with the potential to significantly enhance performance across a broad spectrum of applications (Anil et al., 2023a,b; Brown et al., 2020). The integration of LLMs has revolutionized the development of high-quality embedding models through two primary approaches. Firstly, LLMs have been employed to refine training datasets by generating higher quality examples. Techniques such as hard negative mining (Lee et al., 2024) and synthetic data generation (Dai et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2023) enable the distillation of LLM knowledge into smaller, more efficient embedding models, leading to substantial performance gains. Secondly, recognizing that the embedding model parameters are frequently initialized from language models (Devlin et al., 2019; Karpukhin et al., 2020), researchers have explored leveraging LLM parameters directly for initialization (Ni et al., 2021).

Data filtering has become a powerful tool for improving model performance while reducing computational cost. However, as large language model compute budgets continue to grow, the limited data volume provided by heavily filtered and deduplicated datasets will become a practical constraint. In efforts to better understand how to proceed, we study model performance at various compute budgets and across multiple pre-training datasets created through data filtering and deduplication. We find that, given appropriate modifications to the training recipe, repeating existing aggressively filtered datasets for up to ten epochs can outperform training on the ten times larger superset for a single epoch across multiple compute budget orders of magnitude. While this finding relies on repeating the dataset for many epochs, we also investigate repeats within these datasets at the document level. We find that not all documents within a dataset are equal, and we can create better datasets relative to a token budget by explicitly manipulating the counts of individual documents. We conclude by arguing that even as large language models scale, data filtering remains an important direction of research.

Graph-based techniques relying on neural networks and embeddings have gained attention as a way to develop Recommender Systems (RS) with several papers on the topic presented at SIGIR 2022 and 2023. Given the importance of ensuring that published research is methodologically sound and reproducible, in this paper we analyze 10 graph-based RS papers, most of which were published at SIGIR 2022, and assess their impact on subsequent work published in SIGIR 2023. Our analysis reveals several critical points that require attention: (i) the prevalence of bad practices, such as erroneous data splits or information leakage between training and testing data, which call into question the validity of the results; (ii) frequent inconsistencies between the provided artifacts (source code and data) and their descriptions in the paper, causing uncertainty about what is actually being evaluated; and (iii) the preference for new or complex baselines that are weaker compared to simpler ones, creating the impression of continuous improvement even when, particularly for the Amazon-Book dataset, the state-of-the-art has significantly worsened. Due to these issues, we are unable to confirm the claims made in most of the papers we examined and attempted to reproduce.

In early 2025, Augmented Intelligence - Christie's first AI art auction - drew criticism for showcasing a controversial genre. Amid wider legal uncertainty, artists voiced concerns over data mining practices, notably with respect to copyright. The backlash could be viewed as a microcosm of AI's contested position in the creative economy. Touching on the auction's presentation, reception, and results, this paper explores how, among social dissonance, machine learning finds its place in the artworld. Foregrounding responsible innovation, the paper provides a balanced perspective that champions creators' rights and brings nuance to this polarised debate. With a focus on exhibition design, it centres framing, which refers to the way a piece is presented to influence consumer perception. Context plays a central role in shaping our understanding of how good, valuable, and even ethical an artwork is. In this regard, Augmented Intelligence situates AI art within a surprisingly traditional framework, leveraging hallmarks of "high art" to establish the genre's cultural credibility. Generative AI has a clear economic dimension, converging questions of artistic merit with those of monetary worth. Scholarship on ways of seeing, or framing, could substantively inform the interpretation and evaluation of creative outputs, including assessments of their aesthetic and commercial value.

As multimodal foundational models start being deployed experimentally in Self-Driving cars, a reasonable question we ask ourselves is how similar to humans do these systems respond in certain driving situations -- especially those that are out-of-distribution? To study this, we create the Robusto-1 dataset that uses dashcam video data from Peru, a country with one of the worst (aggressive) drivers in the world, a high traffic index, and a high ratio of bizarre to non-bizarre street objects likely never seen in training. In particular, to preliminarly test at a cognitive level how well Foundational Visual Language Models (VLMs) compare to Humans in Driving, we move away from bounding boxes, segmentation maps, occupancy maps or trajectory estimation to multi-modal Visual Question Answering (VQA) comparing both humans and machines through a popular method in systems neuroscience known as Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA). Depending on the type of questions we ask and the answers these systems give, we will show in what cases do VLMs and Humans converge or diverge allowing us to probe on their cognitive alignment. We find that the degree of alignment varies significantly depending on the type of questions asked to each type of system (Humans vs VLMs), highlighting a gap in their alignment.

Many studies exploring the adoption of Large Language Model-based tools for software development by junior developers have emerged in recent years. These studies have sought to understand developers' perspectives about using those tools, a fundamental pillar for successfully adopting LLM-based tools in Software Engineering. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of junior software developers' perspectives and use of LLM-based tools for software engineering (LLM4SE). We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) following guidelines by Kitchenham et al. on 56 primary studies, applying the definition for junior software developers as software developers with equal or less than five years of experience, including Computer Science/Software Engineering students. We found that the majority of the studies focused on comprehending the different aspects of integrating AI tools in SE. Only 8.9\% of the studies provide a clear definition for junior software developers, and there is no uniformity. Searching for relevant information is the most common task using LLM tools. ChatGPT was the most common LLM tool present in the studies (and experiments). A majority of the studies (83.9\%) report both positive and negative perceptions about the impact of adopting LLM tools. We also found and categorised advantages, challenges, and recommendations regarding LLM adoption. Our results indicate that developers are using LLMs not just for code generation, but also to improve their development skills. Critically, they are not just experiencing the benefits of adopting LLM tools, but they are also aware of at least a few LLM limitations, such as the generation of wrong suggestions, potential data leaking, and AI hallucination. Our findings offer implications for software engineering researchers, educators, and developers.