Motion blur in scene text images severely impairs readability and hinders the reliability of computer vision tasks, including autonomous driving, document digitization, and visual information retrieval. Conventional deblurring approaches are often inadequate in handling spatially varying blur and typically fall short in modeling the long-range dependencies necessary for restoring textual clarity. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a hybrid deep learning framework that combines convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with vision transformers (ViTs), thereby leveraging both local feature extraction and global contextual reasoning. The architecture employs a CNN-based encoder-decoder to preserve structural details, while a transformer module enhances global awareness through self-attention. Training is conducted on a curated dataset derived from TextOCR, where sharp scene-text samples are paired with synthetically blurred versions generated using realistic motion-blur kernels of multiple sizes and orientations. Model optimization is guided by a composite loss that incorporates mean absolute error (MAE), squared error (MSE), perceptual similarity, and structural similarity (SSIM). Quantitative evaluations show that the proposed method attains 32.20 dB in PSNR and 0.934 in SSIM, while remaining lightweight with 2.83 million parameters and an average inference time of 61 ms. These results highlight the effectiveness and computational efficiency of the CNN-ViT hybrid design, establishing its practicality for real-world motion-blurred scene-text restoration.

The current body of research on Parkinson's disease (PD) screening, monitoring, and management has evolved along two largely independent trajectories. The first research community focuses on multimodal sensing of PD-related biomarkers using noninvasive technologies such as inertial measurement units (IMUs), force/pressure insoles, electromyography (EMG), electroencephalography (EEG), speech and acoustic analysis, and RGB/RGB-D motion capture systems. These studies emphasize data acquisition, feature extraction, and machine learning-based classification for PD screening, diagnosis, and disease progression modeling. In parallel, a second research community has concentrated on robotic intervention and rehabilitation, employing socially assistive robots (SARs), robot-assisted rehabilitation (RAR) systems, and virtual reality (VR)-integrated robotic platforms for improving motor and cognitive function, enhancing social engagement, and supporting caregivers. Despite the complementary goals of these two domains, their methodological and technological integration remains limited, with minimal data-level or decision-level coupling between the two. With the advent of advanced artificial intelligence (AI), including large language models (LLMs), agentic AI systems, a unique opportunity now exists to unify these research streams. We envision a closed-loop sensor-AI-robot framework in which multimodal sensing continuously guides the interaction between the patient, caregiver, humanoid robot (and physician) through AI agents that are powered by a multitude of AI models such as robotic and wearables foundation models, LLM-based reasoning, reinforcement learning, and continual learning. Such closed-loop system enables personalized, explainable, and context-aware intervention, forming the basis for digital twin of the PD patient that can adapt over time to deliver intelligent, patient-centered PD care.

We consider the problem of distributionally robust multimodal machine learning. Existing approaches often rely on merging modalities on the feature level (early fusion) or heuristic uncertainty modeling, which downplays modality-aware effects and provide limited insights. We propose a novel distributionally robust optimization (DRO) framework that aims to study both the theoretical and practical insights of multimodal machine learning. We first justify this setup and show the significance of this problem through complexity analysis. We then establish both generalization upper bounds and minimax lower bounds which provide performance guarantees. These results are further extended in settings where we consider encoder-specific error propogations. Empirically, we demonstrate that our approach improves robustness in both simulation settings and real-world datasets. Together, these findings provide a principled foundation for employing multimodal machine learning models in high-stakes applications where uncertainty is unavoidable.

Federated Learning (FL) enables collaborative model training across decentralized clients while preserving data privacy by keeping raw data local. However, FL suffers from significant communication overhead due to the frequent exchange of high-dimensional model updates over constrained networks. In this paper, we present FedSparQ, a lightweight compression framework that dynamically sparsifies the gradient of each client through an adaptive threshold, applies half-precision quantization to retained entries and integrates residuals from error feedback to prevent loss of information. FedSparQ requires no manual tuning of sparsity rates or quantization schedules, adapts seamlessly to both homogeneous and heterogeneous data distributions, and is agnostic to model architecture. Through extensive empirical evaluation on vision benchmarks under independent and identically distributed (IID) and non-IID data, we show that FedSparQ substantially reduces communication overhead (reducing by 90% of bytes sent compared to FedAvg) while preserving or improving model accuracy (improving by 6% compared to FedAvg non-compressed solution or to state-of-the-art compression models) and enhancing convergence robustness (by 50%, compared to the other baselines). Our approach provides a practical, easy-to-deploy solution for bandwidth-constrained federated deployments and lays the groundwork for future extensions in adaptive precision and privacy-preserving protocols.

When Austrian hydropower produc null on plummeted by 44% in early 2025 due to reduced snowpack, it exposed a cri null cal vulnerability: standard meteorological and climatological datasets systema null cally fail in mountain region s that hold untapped renewable poten null al. This perspec null ves paper evaluates emerging solu null ons to the Alpine energy -climate data gap, analyzing datasets from global reanalyses (ERA5, 31 km) to kilometre-scale Digital Twins (Climate DT, Extremes DT, 4.4 km), regional reanalyses (ARA, 2.5 km), and next-genera null on AI weather predic null on models (AIFS, 31 km). The mul null - resolu null on assessment reveals that no single dataset excels universally: coarse reanalyses provide essen null al climatologies but miss valley-scale processes, while Digital Twins resolve Alpine dynamics yet remain computa null onally demanding. Effec null ve energy planning therefore requires strategic dataset combina null ons validated against energy -relevant indices such as popula null on -weighted extremes, wind-gust return periods, and Alpine-adjusted storm thresholds. A key fron null er is sub -hourly (10-15 min) temporal resolu null on to match grid - opera null on needs. Six evidence - based recommenda null ons outline pathways f or bridging spa null al and temporal scales. As renewable deployment expands globally into complex terrain, the Alpine region offers transferable perspec null ves for tackling iden null cal forecas null ng and climate analysis challenges in mountainous regions worldwide.

We study architectural and optimization techniques for sample-efficient language modeling under the constraints of the BabyLM 2025 shared task. Our model, BLaLM, replaces self-attention with a linear-time mLSTM token mixer and explores lightweight enhancements, including short convolutions, sliding window attention with dynamic modulation, and Hedgehog feature maps. To support training in low-resource settings, we curate a high-quality corpus emphasizing readability and pedagogical structure. Experiments across both STRICT and STRICT-SMALL tracks show that (1) linear attention combined with sliding window attention consistently improves zero-shot performance, and (2) the Muon optimizer stabilizes convergence and reduces perplexity over AdamW. These results highlight effective strategies for efficient language modeling without relying on scale.

Connectomics - the mapping of neural connections in an organism's brain - currently requires extraordinary human effort to proofread the data collected from imaging and machine-learning assisted segmentation. With the growing excitement around using AI agents to automate important scientific tasks, we explore whether current AI systems can perform multiple tasks necessary for data proofreading. We introduce ConnectomeBench, a multimodal benchmark evaluating large language model (LLM) capabilities in three critical proofreading tasks: segment type identification, split error correction, and merge error detection. Using expert annotated data from two large open-source datasets - a cubic millimeter of mouse visual cortex and the complete Drosophila brain - we evaluate proprietary multimodal LLMs including Claude 3.7/4 Sonnet, o4-mini, GPT-4.1, GPT-4o, as well as open source models like InternVL-3 and NVLM. Our results demonstrate that current models achieve surprisingly high performance in segment identification (52-82% balanced accuracy vs. 20-25% chance) and binary/multiple choice split error correction (75-85% accuracy vs. 50% chance) while generally struggling on merge error identification tasks. Overall, while the best models still lag behind expert performance, they demonstrate promising capabilities that could eventually enable them to augment and potentially replace human proofreading in connectomics. Project page: https://github.com/jffbrwn2/ConnectomeBench and Dataset https://huggingface.co/datasets/jeffbbrown2/ConnectomeBench/tree/main

We argue that training autoencoders to reconstruct inputs from noised versions of their encodings, when combined with perceptual losses, yields encodings that are structured according to a perceptual hierarchy. We demonstrate the emergence of this hierarchical structure by showing that, after training an audio autoencoder in this manner, perceptually salient information is captured in coarser representation structures than with conventional training. Furthermore, we show that such perceptual hierarchies improve latent diffusion decoding in the context of estimating surprisal in music pitches and predicting EEG-brain responses to music listening. Pretrained weights are available on github.com/CPJKU/pa-audioic.

As 3D point clouds become a cornerstone of modern technology, the need for sophisticated generative models and reliable evaluation metrics has grown exponentially. In this work, we first expose that some commonly used metrics for evaluating generated point clouds, particularly those based on Chamfer Distance (CD), lack robustness against defects and fail to capture geometric fidelity and local shape consistency when used as quality indicators. W e further show that introducing samples alignment prior to distance calculation and replacing CD with Density-Aware Chamfer Distance (DCD) are simple yet essential steps to ensure the consistency and robustness of point cloud generative model evaluation metrics. While existing metrics primarily focus on directly comparing 3D Euclidean coordinates, we present a novel metric, named Surface Normal Concordance (SNC), which approximates surface similarity by comparing estimated point normals. This new metric, when combined with traditional ones, provides a more comprehensive evaluation of the quality of generated samples. Finally, leveraging recent advancements in transformer-based models for point cloud analysis, such as serialized patch attention, we propose a new architecture for generating high-fidelity 3D structures, the Diffusion Point Transformer . W e perform extensive experiments and comparisons on the ShapeNet dataset, showing that our model outperforms previous solutions, particularly in terms of quality of generated point clouds, achieving new state-of-the-art.

Existing benchmarks for visual document retrieval (VDR) largely overlook non-English languages and the structural complexity of official publications. To address this gap, we introduce SDS KoPub VDR, the first large-scale, public benchmark for retrieving and understanding Korean public documents. The benchmark is built upon 361 real-world documents, including 256 files under the KOGL Type 1 license and 105 from official legal portals, capturing complex visual elements like tables, charts, and multi-column layouts. To establish a reliable evaluation set, we constructed 600 query-page-answer triples. These were initially generated using multimodal models (e.g., GPT-4o) and subsequently underwent human verification to ensure factual accuracy and contextual relevance. The queries span six major public domains and are categorized by the reasoning modality required: text-based, visual-based, and cross-modal. We evaluate SDS KoPub VDR on two complementary tasks: (1) text-only retrieval and (2) multimodal retrieval, which leverages visual features alongside text. This dual-task evaluation reveals substantial performance gaps, particularly in multimodal scenarios requiring cross-modal reasoning, even for state-of-the-art models. As a foundational resource, SDS KoPub VDR enables rigorous and fine-grained evaluation and provides a roadmap for advancing multimodal AI in real-world document intelligence. The dataset is available at https://huggingface.co/datasets/SamsungSDS-Research/SDS-KoPub-VDR-Benchmark.