Deep Learning
THD-BAR: Topology Hierarchical Derived Brain Autoregressive Modeling for EEG Generic Representations
Yang, Wenchao, Yan, Weidong, Liu, Wenkang, Ma, Yulan, Li, Yang
Large-scale pre-trained models hold significant potential for learning universal EEG representations. However, most existing methods, particularly autoregressive (AR) frameworks, primarily rely on straightforward temporal sequencing of multi-channel EEG data, which fails to capture the rich physiological characteristics inherent to EEG signals. Moreover, their time-centered modeling approach also limits the effective representation of the dynamic spatial topology of brain activity. To address these challenges and fully exploit the potential of large-scale EEG models, we propose a novel Topology Hierarchical Derived Brain Autoregressive Modeling (THD-BAR) for EEG generic representations. The core innovation of THD-BAR lies in the introduction of the Brain Topology Hierarchy (BTH), which establishes a multi-scale spatial order for EEG channels. This hierarchical structure enables a redefinition of autoregressive learning as a "next-scale-time prediction" problem, effectively capturing both spatial and temporal dynamics. Based on BTH, we design a Topology-Hierarchical Vector Quantized-Variational Autoencoder (THVQ-VAE) for multi-scale tokenization and develop an enhanced Brain Autoregressive (BAR) module with specialized masking strategies for prediction. Through extensive large-scale pre-training on 17 datasets, followed by rigorous validation on 10 downstream datasets spanning 5 distinct tasks, THD-BAR consistently outperforms existing methods. These results highlight the superior generalization and modeling capabilities of our proposed approach.
Preparation Meets Opportunity: Enhancing Data Preprocessing for ML Training With Seneca
Desai, Omkar, Jiao, Ziyang, Pei, Shuyi, Bhimani, Janki, Kim, Bryan S.
Input data preprocessing is a common bottleneck when concurrently training multimedia machine learning (ML) models in modern systems. To alleviate these bottlenecks and reduce the training time for concurrent jobs, we present Seneca, a data loading system that optimizes cache partitioning and data sampling for the data storage and ingestion (DSI) pipeline. The design of Seneca contains two key techniques. First, Seneca uses a performance model for the data pipeline to optimally partition the cache for three different forms of data (encoded, decoded, and augmented). Second, Seneca opportunistically serves cached data over uncached ones during random batch sampling so that concurrent jobs benefit from each other. We implement Seneca by modifying PyTorch and demonstrate its effectiveness by comparing it against several state-of-the-art caching systems for DNN training. Seneca reduces the makespan by 45.23% compared to PyTorch and increases data processing throughput by up to 3.45x compared to the next best dataloader.
Crossing Borders: A Multimodal Challenge for Indian Poetry Translation and Image Generation
Jamil, Sofia, Charan, Kotla Sai, Saha, Sriparna, Goswami, Koustava, J, Joseph K
Indian poetry, known for its linguistic complexity and deep cultural resonance, has a rich and varied heritage spanning thousands of years. However, its layered meanings, cultural allusions, and sophisticated grammatical constructions often pose challenges for comprehension, especially for non-native speakers or readers unfamiliar with its context and language. Despite its cultural significance, existing works on poetry have largely overlooked Indian language poems. In this paper, we propose the Translation and Image Generation (TAI) framework, leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and Latent Diffusion Models through appropriate prompt tuning. Our framework supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Quality Education (SDG 4) and Reduced Inequalities (SDG 10) by enhancing the accessibility of culturally rich Indian-language poetry to a global audience. It includes (1) a translation module that uses an Odds Ratio Preference Alignment Algorithm to accurately translate morphologically rich poetry into English, and (2) an image generation module that employs a semantic graph to capture tokens, dependencies, and semantic relationships between metaphors and their meanings, to create visually meaningful representations of Indian poems. Our comprehensive experimental evaluation, including both human and quantitative assessments, demonstrates the superiority of TAI Diffusion in poem image generation tasks, outperforming strong baselines. To further address the scarcity of resources for Indian-language poetry, we introduce the Morphologically Rich Indian Language Poems MorphoVerse Dataset, comprising 1,570 poems across 21 low-resource Indian languages. By addressing the gap in poetry translation and visual comprehension, this work aims to broaden accessibility and enrich the reader's experience.
Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Nonlinear Output Regulation
Mengozzi, Sebastiano, Esposito, Giovanni B., Bin, Michelangelo, Acquaviva, Andrea, Bartolini, Andrea, Marconi, Lorenzo
This work addresses the full-information output regulation problem for nonlinear systems, assuming the states of both the plant and the exosystem are known. In this setting, perfect tracking or rejection is achieved by constructing a zero-regulation-error manifold $ฯ(w)$ and a feedforward input $c(w)$ that render such manifold invariant. The pair $(ฯ(w), c(w))$ is characterized by the regulator equations, i.e., a system of PDEs with an algebraic constraint. We focus on accurately solving the regulator equations introducing a physics-informed neural network (PINN) approach that directly approximates $ฯ(w)$ and $c(w)$ by minimizing the residuals under boundary and feasibility conditions, without requiring precomputed trajectories or labeled data. The learned operator maps exosystem states to steady state plant states and inputs, enables real-time inference and, critically, generalizes across families of the exosystem with varying initial conditions and parameters. The framework is validated on a regulation task that synchronizes a helicopter's vertical dynamics with a harmonically oscillating platform. The resulting PINN-based solver reconstructs the zero-error manifold with high fidelity and sustains regulation performance under exosystem variations, highlighting the potential of learning-enabled solvers for nonlinear output regulation. The proposed approach is broadly applicable to nonlinear systems that admit a solution to the output regulation problem.
Systematic Evaluation of Time-Frequency Features for Binaural Sound Source Localization
Panah, Davoud Shariat, Ragano, Alessandro, Barry, Dan, Skoglund, Jan, Hines, Andrew
ABSTRACT This study presents a systematic evaluation of time-frequency feature design for binaural sound source localization (SSL), focusing on how feature selection influences model performance across diverse conditions. We investigate the performance of a convolu-tional neural network (CNN) model using various combinations of amplitude-based features (magnitude spectrogram, interaural level difference - ILD) and phase-based features (phase spectrogram, interaural phase difference - IPD). Evaluations on in-domain and out-of-domain data with mismatched head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) reveal that carefully chosen feature combinations often outperform increases in model complexity. While two-feature sets such as ILD + IPD are sufficient for in-domain SSL, generalization to diverse content requires richer inputs combining channel spectrograms with both ILD and IPD. Using the optimal feature sets, our low-complexity CNN model achieves competitive performance. Our findings underscore the importance of feature design in binaural SSL and provide practical guidance for both domain-specific and general-purpose localization.
Unlocking the Forgery Detection Potential of Vanilla MLLMs: A Novel Training-Free Pipeline
Zuo, Rui, Tong, Qinyue, Lu, Zhe-Ming, Lu, Ziqian
With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) technologies, including multimodal large language models (MLLMs) and diffusion models, image generation and manipulation have become remarkably effortless. Existing image forgery detection and localization (IFDL) methods often struggle to generalize across diverse datasets and offer limited interpretability. Nowadays, MLLMs demonstrate strong generalization potential across diverse vision-language tasks, and some studies introduce this capability to IFDL via large-scale training. However, such approaches cost considerable computational resources, while failing to reveal the inherent generalization potential of vanilla MLLMs to address this problem. Inspired by this observation, we propose Foresee, a training-free MLLM-based pipeline tailored for image forgery analysis. It eliminates the need for additional training and enables a lightweight inference process, while surpassing existing MLLM-based methods in both tamper localization accuracy and the richness of textual explanations. Foresee employs a type-prior-driven strategy and utilizes a Flexible Feature Detector (FFD) module to specifically handle copy-move manipulations, thereby effectively unleashing the potential of vanilla MLLMs in the forensic domain. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach simultaneously achieves superior localization accuracy and provides more comprehensive textual explanations. Moreover, Foresee exhibits stronger generalization capability, outperforming existing IFDL methods across various tampering types, including copy-move, splicing, removal, local enhancement, deepfake, and AIGC-based editing. The code will be released in the final version.
UNSEEN: Enhancing Dataset Pruning from a Generalization Perspective
Xu, Furui, Wang, Shaobo, Zhang, Jiajun, Sun, Chenghao, Tang, Haixiang, Zhang, Linfeng
The growing scale of datasets in deep learning has introduced significant computational challenges. Dataset pruning addresses this challenge by constructing a compact but informative coreset from the full dataset with comparable performance. Previous approaches typically establish scoring metrics based on specific criteria to identify representative samples. However, these methods predominantly rely on sample scores obtained from the model's performance during the training (i.e., fitting) phase. As scoring models achieve near-optimal performance on training data, such fitting-centric approaches induce a dense distribution of sample scores within a narrow numerical range. This concentration reduces the distinction between samples and hinders effective selection. To address this challenge, we conduct dataset pruning from the perspective of generalization, i.e., scoring samples based on models not exposed to them during training. We propose a plug-and-play framework, UNSEEN, which can be integrated into existing dataset pruning methods. Additionally, conventional score-based methods are single-step and rely on models trained solely on the complete dataset, providing limited perspective on the importance of samples. To address this limitation, we scale UNSEEN to multi-step scenarios and propose an incremental selection technique through scoring models trained on varying coresets, and optimize the quality of the coreset dynamically. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and ImageNet-1K. Notably, on ImageNet-1K, UNSEEN achieves lossless performance while reducing training data by 30\%.
DINO-Detect: A Simple yet Effective Framework for Blur-Robust AI-Generated Image Detection
Shen, Jialiang, Zheng, Jiyang, Xue, Yunqi, Chen, Huajie, Yao, Yu, Kang, Hui, Liu, Ruiqi, Gong, Helin, Yang, Yang, Wang, Dadong, Liu, Tongliang
With growing concerns over image authenticity and digital safety, the field of AI-generated image (AIGI) detection has progressed rapidly. Y et, most AIGI detectors still struggle under real-world degradations, particularly motion blur, which frequently occurs in handheld photography, fast motion, and compressed video. Such blur distorts fine textures and suppresses high-frequency artifacts, causing severe performance drops in real-world settings. W e address this limitation with a blur-robust AIGI detection framework based on teacher-student knowledge distillation. A high-capacity teacher (DINOv3), trained on clean (i.e., sharp) images, provides stable and semantically rich representations that serve as a reference for learning. By freezing the teacher to maintain its generalization ability, we distill its feature and logit responses from sharp images to a student trained on blurred counterparts, enabling the student to produce consistent representations under motion degradation. Extensive experiments benchmarks show that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance under both motion-blurred and clean conditions, demonstrating improved generalization and real-world applicability. Source codes will be released at: Project Page.
BitSnap: Checkpoint Sparsification and Quantization in LLM Training
Peng, Yanxin, Li, Qingping, Wu, Baodong, Li, Shigang, Dai, Guohao, Yan, Shengen, Wang, Yu
As large language models (LLMs) continue to grow in size and complexity, efficient checkpoint saving\&loading has become crucial for managing storage, memory usage, and fault tolerance in LLM training. The current works do not comprehensively take into account the optimization of these several aspects. This paper proposes a novel checkpoint sparsification and quantization method that adapts dynamically to different training stages and model architectures. We present a comprehensive analysis of existing lossy and lossless compression techniques, identify current limitations, and introduce our adaptive approach that balances compression ratio, speed, and precision impact throughout the training process. Experiments on different sizes of LLMs demonstrate that our bitmask-based sparsification method achieves 16x compression ratio without compromising model accuracy. Additionally, the cluster-based quantization method achieves 2x compression ratio with little precision loss.
VULPO: Context-Aware Vulnerability Detection via On-Policy LLM Optimization
Li, Youpeng, Yu, Fuxun, Wang, Xinda
The widespread reliance on open-source software dramatically increases the risk of vulnerability exploitation, underscoring the need for effective and scalable vulnerability detection (VD). Existing VD techniques, whether traditional machine learning-based or LLM-based approaches like prompt engineering, supervised fine-tuning, or off-policy preference optimization, remain fundamentally limited in their ability to perform context-aware analysis: They depend on fixed inputs or static preference datasets, cannot adaptively explore repository-level dependencies, and are constrained by function-level benchmarks that overlook critical vulnerability context. This paper introduces Vulnerability-Adaptive Policy Optimization (VULPO), an on-policy LLM reinforcement learning framework for context-aware VD. To support training and evaluation, we first construct ContextVul, a new dataset that augments high-quality function-level samples with lightweight method to extract repository-level context information. We then design multi-dimensional reward structuring that jointly captures prediction correctness, vulnerability localization accuracy, and the semantic relevance of vulnerability analysis, thereby guiding the model toward comprehensive contextual reasoning. To address the asymmetric difficulty of different vulnerability cases and mitigate reward hacking, VULPO incorporates label-level and sample-level difficulty-adaptive reward scaling, encouraging the model to explore challenging cases while maintaining balanced reward distribution. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our VULPO framework in context-aware VD: Our VULPO-4B substantially outperforms existing VD baselines based on prompt engineering and off-policy optimization, improving F1 by 85% over Qwen3-4B and achieving performance comparable to a 150x larger-scale model, DeepSeek-R1-0528.