We present the first federated learning (FL) approach for pancreas part (head, body, tail) segmentation in MRI, addressing a critical clinical challenge as a significant innovation. Pancreatic diseases exhibit marked regional heterogeneity--cancers predominantly occur in the head region while chronic pancreatitis causes tissue loss in the tail--making accurate segmentation of the organ into head, body, and tail regions essential for precise diagnosis and treatment planning. This segmentation task remains exceptionally challenging in MRI due to variable morphology, poor soft-tissue contrast, and anatomical variations across patients. Our novel contribution tackles two fundamental challenges: first, the technical complexity of pancreas part delineation in MRI, and second the data scarcity problem that has hindered prior approaches. We introduce a privacy-preserving FL framework that enables collaborative model training across seven medical institutions without direct data sharing, leveraging a diverse dataset of 711 T1W and 726 T2W MRI scans. Our key innovations include: (1) a systematic evaluation of three state-of-the-art segmentation architectures (U-Net, Attention U-Net,Swin UNETR) paired with two FL algorithms (FedA vg, FedProx), revealing Attention U-Net with FedAvg as optimal for pancreatic heterogeneity, which was never been done before; (2) a novel anatomically-informed loss function prioritizing region-specific texture contrasts in MRI. Comprehensive evaluation demonstrates that our approach achieves clinically viable performance despite training on distributed, heterogeneous datasets.

Whole-body manipulation is a powerful yet underexplored approach that enables robots to interact with large, heavy, or awkward objects using more than just their end-effectors. Soft robots, with their inherent passive compliance, are particularly well-suited for such contact-rich manipulation tasks, but their uncertainties in kinematics and dynamics pose significant challenges for simulation and control. In this work, we address this challenge with a simulation that can run up to 350x real time on a single thread in MuJoCo and provide a detailed analysis of the critical tradeoffs between speed and accuracy for this simulation. Using this framework, we demonstrate a successful zero-shot sim-to-real transfer of a learned whole-body manipulation policy, achieving an 88% success rate on the Baloo hardware platform. We show that guiding RL with a simple motion primitive is critical to this success where standard reward shaping methods struggled to produce a stable and successful policy for whole-body manipulation. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that the learned policy does not simply mimic the motion primitive. It exhibits beneficial reactive behavior, such as re-grasping and perturbation recovery. We analyze and contrast this learned policy against an open-loop baseline to show that the policy can also exhibit aggressive over-corrections under perturbation. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of forceful, six-DoF whole-body manipulation using two continuum soft arms on a large-scale platform (10 kg payloads), with zero-shot policy transfer.

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a rapidly escalating global health crisis. While genomic sequencing enables rapid prediction of resistance phenotypes, current computational methods have limitations. Standard machine learning models treat the genome as an unordered collection of features, ignoring the sequential context of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs). State-of-the-art sequence models like Transformers are often too data-hungry and computationally expensive for the moderately-sized datasets that are typical in this domain. To address these challenges, we propose AMR-EnsembleNet, an ensemble framework that synergistically combines sequence-based and feature-based learning. We developed a lightweight, custom 1D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to efficiently learn predictive sequence motifs from high-dimensional SNP data. This sequence-aware model was ensembled with an XGBoost model, a powerful gradient boosting system adept at capturing complex, non-local feature interactions. We trained and evaluated our framework on a benchmark dataset of 809 E. coli strains, predicting resistance across four antibiotics with varying class imbalance. Our 1D CNN-XGBoost ensemble consistently achieved top-tier performance across all the antibiotics, reaching a Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) of 0.926 for Ciprofloxacin (CIP) and the highest Macro F1-score of 0.691 for the challenging Gentamicin (GEN) AMR prediction. We also show that our model consistently focuses on SNPs within well-known AMR genes like fusA and parC, confirming it learns the correct genetic signals for resistance. Our work demonstrates that fusing a sequence-aware 1D CNN with a feature-based XGBoost model creates a powerful ensemble, overcoming the limitations of using either an order-agnostic or a standalone sequence model.

Item difficulty plays a crucial role in test performance, interpretability of scores, and equity for all test-takers, especially in large-scale assessments. Traditional approaches to item difficulty modeling rely on field testing and classical test theory (CTT)-based item analysis or item response theory (IRT) calibration, which can be time-consuming and costly. To overcome these challenges, text-based approaches leveraging machine learning and language models, have emerged as promising alternatives. This paper reviews and synthesizes 37 articles on automated item difficulty prediction in large-scale assessment settings published through May 2025. For each study, we delineate the dataset, difficulty parameter, subject domain, item type, number of items, training and test data split, input, features, model, evaluation criteria, and model performance outcomes. Results showed that although classic machine learning models remain relevant due to their interpretability, state-of-the-art language models, using both small and large transformer-based architectures, can capture syntactic and semantic patterns without the need for manual feature engineering. Uniquely, model performance outcomes were summarized to serve as a benchmark for future research and overall, text-based methods have the potential to predict item difficulty with root mean square error (RMSE) as low as 0.165, Pearson correlation as high as 0.87, and accuracy as high as 0.806. The review concludes by discussing implications for practice and outlining future research directions for automated item difficulty modeling.

Molecule generation is key to drug discovery and materials science, enabling the design of novel compounds with specific properties. Large language models (LLMs) can learn to perform a wide range of tasks from just a few examples. However, generating valid molecules using representations like SMILES is challenging for LLMs in few-shot settings. In this work, we explore how LLMs can generate 100% valid molecules. We evaluate whether LLMs can use SELFIES, a representation where every string corresponds to a valid molecule, for valid molecule generation but find that LLMs perform worse with SELFIES than with SMILES. We then examine LLMs' ability to correct invalid SMILES and find their capacity limited. Finally, we introduce SmiSelf, a cross-chemical language framework for invalid SMILES correction. SmiSelf converts invalid SMILES to SELFIES using grammatical rules, leveraging SELFIES' mechanisms to correct the invalid SMILES. Experiments show that SmiSelf ensures 100% validity while preserving molecular characteristics and maintaining or even enhancing performance on other metrics. SmiSelf helps expand LLMs' practical applications in biomedicine and is compatible with all SMILES-based generative models. Code is available at https://github.com/wentao228/SmiSelf.

In the context of industrial factories and energy producers, unplanned outages are highly costly and difficult to service. However, existing acoustic-anomaly detection studies largely rely on generic industrial or synthetic datasets, with few focused on hydropower plants due to limited access. This paper presents a comparative analysis of acoustic-based anomaly detection methods, as a way to improve predictive maintenance in hydropower plants. We address key challenges in the acoustic preprocessing under highly noisy conditions before extracting time- and frequency-domain features. Then, we benchmark three machine learning models: LSTM AE, K-Means, and OC-SVM, which are tested on two real-world datasets from the Rodundwerk II pumped-storage plant in Austria, one with induced anomalies and one with real-world conditions. The One-Class SVM achieved the best trade-off of accuracy (ROC AUC 0.966-0.998) and minimal training time, while the LSTM autoencoder delivered strong detection (ROC AUC 0.889-0.997) at the expense of higher computational cost.

This is the accepted version of the paper publis hed in 2025 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops (IPDPSW) . Given Name Surname line 2: dept. Given Name Surname line 2: dept. Abstract -- This study presents a machine learning - assisted approach to optimize task scheduling in cluster systems, focusing on node - affinity constraints. Traditional schedulers like Kubernetes struggle with real - time adaptability, whereas the proposed continuous transfer learning model evolves dynamically during operations, minimizing retraining needs. Evaluated on Google Cluster Data, the model achieves over 99% accuracy, reducing computational overhead and improving scheduling latency for constrained tasks. This scalable solution enables real - time optimization, advancing ma chine learning integration in cluster management and paving the way for future adaptive scheduling strategies. In the rapidly evolving landscape of cloud computing and distributed high - performance environments, the efficient management of architectural and software resources became apparently paramount for ensuring suitable performance and minimizing latency. As long as the industry organizations increasingly rely on cluster - based architectures to orchestrate their broad areas of possible applications, the importance of effective task scheduling has come to the forefront . Over the last few years, traditional schedulers, such as Kubernetes and some more, have laid the groundwork for managing containerized workloads; however, it was found that it poses a challenge for them to adapt to the dynamic nature of real - time workloads and node - affinity constraints [ 35 ] . These limitations result in inefficient resource utilization and longer scheduling delays, which ultimately affect overall system performance, especially in high - performance systems [9][18] . In mission - critical environments, these issues can escalate, disrupting vital systems like power networks, healthcare, defen s e systems, and others.

6G wireless networks aim to exploit semantic awareness to optimize radio resources. By optimizing the transmission through the lens of the desired goal, the energy consumption of transmissions can also be reduced, and the latency can be improved. To that end, this paper investigates a paradigm in which the capabilities of generative AI (GenAI) on the edge are harnessed for network optimization. In particular, we investigate an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) handover framework that takes advantage of GenAI and semantic communication to maintain reliable connectivity. To that end, we propose a framework in which a lightweight MobileBERT language model, fine-tuned using Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), is deployed on the UAV. This model processes multi-attribute flight and radio measurements and performs multi-label classification to determine appropriate handover action. Concurrently, the model identifies an appropriate set of contextual "Reason Tags" that elucidate the decision's rationale. Our model, evaluated on a rule-based synthetic dataset of UAV handover scenarios, demonstrates the model's high efficacy in learning these rules, achieving high accuracy in predicting the primary handover decision. The model also shows strong performance in identifying supporting reasons, with an F1 micro-score of approximately 0.9 for reason tags.

The manual creation of the "Impression" section in radiology reports is a primary driver of radiologist burnout. To address this challenge, we propose a coarse-to-fine framework that leverages open-source large language models (LLMs) to automatically generate and personalize impressions from clinical findings. The system first produces a draft impression and then refines it using machine learning and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) to align with individual radiologists' styles while ensuring factual accuracy. We fine-tune LLaMA and Mistral models on a large dataset of reports from the University of Chicago Medicine. Our approach is designed to significantly reduce administrative workload and improve reporting efficiency while maintaining high standards of clinical precision.

Large language model (LLM) personalization aims to align model outputs with individuals' unique preferences and opinions. While recent efforts have implemented various personalization methods, a unified theoretical framework that can systematically understand the drivers of effective personalization is still lacking. In this work, we integrate the well-established cognitive dual-memory model into LLM personalization, by mirroring episodic memory to historical user engagements and semantic memory to long-term, evolving user beliefs. Specifically, we systematically investigate memory instantiations and introduce a unified framework, PRIME, using episodic and semantic memory mechanisms. We further augment PRIME with a novel personalized thinking capability inspired by the slow thinking strategy. Moreover, recognizing the absence of suitable benchmarks, we introduce a dataset using Change My View (CMV) from Reddit, specifically designed to evaluate long-context personalization. Extensive experiments validate PRIME's effectiveness across both long- and short-context scenarios. Further analysis confirms that PRIME effectively captures dynamic personalization beyond mere popularity biases.