Graph anomaly detection (GAD), which aims to identify unusual graph instances (nodes, edges, subgraphs, or graphs), has attracted increasing attention in recent years due to its significance in a wide range of applications. Deep learning approaches, graph neural networks (GNNs) in particular, have been emerging as a promising paradigm for GAD, owing to its strong capability in capturing complex structure and/or node attributes in graph data. Considering the large number of methods proposed for GNN-based GAD, it is of paramount importance to summarize the methodologies and findings in the existing GAD studies, so that we can pinpoint effective model designs for tackling open GAD problems. To this end, in this work we aim to present a comprehensive review of deep learning approaches for GAD. Existing GAD surveys are focused on task-specific discussions, making it difficult to understand the technical insights of existing methods and their limitations in addressing some unique challenges in GAD. To fill this gap, we first discuss the problem complexities and their resulting challenges in GAD, and then provide a systematic review of current deep GAD methods from three novel perspectives of methodology, including GNN backbone design, proxy task design for GAD, and graph anomaly measures. To deepen the discussions, we further propose a taxonomy of 13 fine-grained method categories under these three perspectives to provide more in-depth insights into the model designs and their capabilities. To facilitate the experiments and validation, we also summarize a collection of widely-used GAD datasets and empirical comparison. We further discuss multiple open problems to inspire more future high-quality research. A continuously updated repository for datasets, links to the codes of algorithms, and empirical comparison is available at https://github.com/mala-lab/Awesome-Deep-Graph-Anomaly-Detection.

While traditional recommendation techniques have made significant strides in the past decades, they still suffer from limited generalization performance caused by factors like inadequate collaborative signals, weak latent representations, and noisy data. In response, diffusion models (DMs) have emerged as promising solutions for recommender systems due to their robust generative capabilities, solid theoretical foundations, and improved training stability. To this end, in this paper, we present the first comprehensive survey on diffusion models for recommendation, and draw a bird's-eye view from the perspective of the whole pipeline in real-world recommender systems. We systematically categorize existing research works into three primary domains: (1) diffusion for data engineering & encoding, focusing on data augmentation and representation enhancement; (2) diffusion as recommender models, employing diffusion models to directly estimate user preferences and rank items; and (3) diffusion for content presentation, utilizing diffusion models to generate personalized content such as fashion and advertisement creatives. Our taxonomy highlights the unique strengths of diffusion models in capturing complex data distributions and generating high-quality, diverse samples that closely align with user preferences. We also summarize the core characteristics of the adapting diffusion models for recommendation, and further identify key areas for future exploration, which helps establish a roadmap for researchers and practitioners seeking to advance recommender systems through the innovative application of diffusion models. To further facilitate the research community of recommender systems based on diffusion models, we actively maintain a GitHub repository for papers and other related resources in this rising direction https://github.com/CHIANGEL/Awesome-Diffusion-for-RecSys.

Anomaly detection on graphs plays an important role in many real-world applications. Usually, these data are composed of multiple types (e.g., user information and transaction records for financial data), thus exhibiting view heterogeneity. Therefore, it can be challenging to leverage such multi-view information and learn the graph's contextual information to identify rare anomalies. To tackle this problem, many deep learning-based methods utilize contrastive learning loss as a regularization term to learn good representations. However, many existing contrastive-based methods show that traditional contrastive learning losses fail to consider the semantic information (e.g., class membership information). In addition, we theoretically show that clustering-based contrastive learning also easily leads to a sub-optimal solution. To address these issues, in this paper, we proposed an autoencoder-based clustering framework regularized by a similarity-guided contrastive loss to detect anomalous nodes. Specifically, we build a similarity map to help the model learn robust representations without imposing a hard margin constraint between the positive and negative pairs. Theoretically, we show that the proposed similarity-guided loss is a variant of contrastive learning loss, and how it alleviates the issue of unreliable pseudo-labels with the connection to graph spectral clustering. Experimental results on several datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed framework.

Graph machine learning (GML) has been successfully applied across a wide range of tasks. Nonetheless, GML faces significant challenges in generalizing over out-of-distribution (OOD) data, which raises concerns about its wider applicability. Recent advancements have underscored the crucial role of causality-driven approaches in overcoming these generalization challenges. Distinct from traditional GML methods that primarily rely on statistical dependencies, causality-focused strategies delve into the underlying causal mechanisms of data generation and model prediction, thus significantly improving the generalization of GML across different environments. This paper offers a thorough review of recent progress in causality-involved GML generalization. We elucidate the fundamental concepts of employing causality to enhance graph model generalization and categorize the various approaches, providing detailed descriptions of their methodologies and the connections among them. Furthermore, we explore the incorporation of causality in other related important areas of trustworthy GML, such as explanation, fairness, and robustness. Concluding with a discussion on potential future research directions, this review seeks to articulate the continuing development and future potential of causality in enhancing the trustworthiness of graph machine learning.

Accessing and comprehending religious texts, particularly the Quran (the sacred scripture of Islam) and Ahadith (the corpus of the sayings or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad), in today's digital era necessitates efficient and accurate Question-Answering (QA) systems. Yet, the scarcity of QA systems tailored specifically to the detailed nature of inquiries about the Quranic Tafsir (explanation, interpretation, context of Quran for clarity) and Ahadith poses significant challenges. To address this gap, we introduce a comprehensive dataset meticulously crafted for QA purposes within the domain of Quranic Tafsir and Ahadith. This dataset comprises a robust collection of over 73,000 question-answer pairs, standing as the largest reported dataset in this specialized domain. Importantly, both questions and answers within the dataset are meticulously enriched with contextual information, serving as invaluable resources for training and evaluating tailored QA systems. However, while this paper highlights the dataset's contributions and establishes a benchmark for evaluating QA performance in the Quran and Ahadith domains, our subsequent human evaluation uncovered critical insights regarding the limitations of existing automatic evaluation techniques. The discrepancy between automatic evaluation metrics, such as ROUGE scores, and human assessments became apparent. The human evaluation indicated significant disparities: the model's verdict consistency with expert scholars ranged between 11% to 20%, while its contextual understanding spanned a broader spectrum of 50% to 90%. These findings underscore the necessity for evaluation techniques that capture the nuances and complexities inherent in understanding religious texts, surpassing the limitations of traditional automatic metrics.

The autonomous driving industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, driven by rapid advancements in technology and increasing demand for safer, more efficient transportation. At the heart of this revolution are two critical factors: lateral and longitudinal controls, which together enable vehicles to track complex environments with high accuracy and minimal errors. This paper provides a detailed overview of two of the field's most commonly used and stable control algorithms: proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and pure pursuit. These algorithms have proved useful in solving the issues of lateral (steering) and longitudinal (speed and distance) control in autonomous vehicles. This survey aims to provide researchers, engineers, and industry professionals with an in depth understanding of these fundamental control algorithms, their current applications, and their potential to shape the future of autonomous driving technology.

Mixed multinomial logits are discrete mixtures introduced several decades ago to model the probability of choosing an attribute from $p$ possible candidates, in heterogeneous populations. The model has recently attracted attention in the AI literature, under the name softmax mixtures, where it is routinely used in the final layer of a neural network to map a large number $p$ of vectors in $\mathbb{R}^L$ to a probability vector. Despite its wide applicability and empirical success, statistically optimal estimators of the mixture parameters, obtained via algorithms whose running time scales polynomially in $L$, are not known. This paper provides a solution to this problem for contemporary applications, such as large language models, in which the mixture has a large number $p$ of support points, and the size $N$ of the sample observed from the mixture is also large. Our proposed estimator combines two classical estimators, obtained respectively via a method of moments (MoM) and the expectation-minimization (EM) algorithm. Although both estimator types have been studied, from a theoretical perspective, for Gaussian mixtures, no similar results exist for softmax mixtures for either procedure. We develop a new MoM parameter estimator based on latent moment estimation that is tailored to our model, and provide the first theoretical analysis for a MoM-based procedure in softmax mixtures. Although consistent, MoM for softmax mixtures can exhibit poor numerical performance, as observed other mixture models. Nevertheless, as MoM is provably in a neighborhood of the target, it can be used as warm start for any iterative algorithm. We study in detail the EM algorithm, and provide its first theoretical analysis for softmax mixtures. Our final proposal for parameter estimation is the EM algorithm with a MoM warm start.

Black swan events are statistically rare occurrences that carry extremely high risks. A typical view of defining black swan events is heavily assumed to originate from an unpredictable time-varying environments; however, the community lacks a comprehensive definition of black swan events. To this end, this paper challenges that the standard view is incomplete and claims that high-risk, statistically rare events can also occur in unchanging environments due to human misperception of their value and likelihood, which we call as spatial black swan event. We first carefully categorize black swan events, focusing on spatial black swan events, and mathematically formalize the definition of black swan events. We hope these definitions can pave the way for the development of algorithms to prevent such events by rationally correcting human perception.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized food marketing by providing advanced techniques for personalized recommendations, consumer behavior prediction, and campaign optimization. This paper explores the shift from traditional advertising methods, such as TV, radio, and print, to AI-driven strategies. Traditional approaches were successful in building brand awareness but lacked the level of personalization that modern consumers demand. AI leverages data from consumer purchase histories, browsing behaviors, and social media activity to create highly tailored marketing campaigns. These strategies allow for more accurate product recommendations, prediction of consumer needs, and ultimately improve customer satisfaction and user experience. AI enhances marketing efforts by automating labor-intensive processes, leading to greater efficiency and cost savings. It also enables the continuous adaptation of marketing messages, ensuring they remain relevant and engaging over time. While AI presents significant benefits in terms of personalization and efficiency, it also comes with challenges, particularly the substantial investment required for technology and skilled expertise. This paper compares the strengths and weaknesses of traditional and AI-driven food marketing techniques, offering valuable insights into how marketers can leverage AI to create more effective and targeted marketing strategies in the evolving digital landscape.

Automatic scene generation is an essential area of research with applications in robotics, recreation, visual representation, training and simulation, education, and more. This survey provides a comprehensive review of the current state-of-the-arts in automatic scene generation, focusing on techniques that leverage machine learning, deep learning, embedded systems, and natural language processing (NLP). We categorize the models into four main types: Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Transformers, and Diffusion Models. Each category is explored in detail, discussing various sub-models and their contributions to the field. We also review the most commonly used datasets, such as COCO-Stuff, Visual Genome, and MS-COCO, which are critical for training and evaluating these models. Methodologies for scene generation are examined, including image-to-3D conversion, text-to-3D generation, UI/layout design, graph-based methods, and interactive scene generation. Evaluation metrics such as Frechet Inception Distance (FID), Kullback-Leibler (KL) Divergence, Inception Score (IS), Intersection over Union (IoU), and Mean Average Precision (mAP) are discussed in the context of their use in assessing model performance. The survey identifies key challenges and limitations in the field, such as maintaining realism, handling complex scenes with multiple objects, and ensuring consistency in object relationships and spatial arrangements. By summarizing recent advances and pinpointing areas for improvement, this survey aims to provide a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners working on automatic scene generation.