Multi-character role-playing aims to equip models with the capability to simulate diverse roles. Existing methods either use one shared parameterized module across all roles or assign a separate parameterized module to each role. However, the role-shared module may ignore distinct traits of each role, weakening personality learning, while the role-specific module may overlook shared traits across multiple roles, hindering commonality modeling. In this paper, we propose a novel HyCoRA: Hyper-Contrastive Role-Adaptive learning framework, which efficiently improves multi-character role-playing ability by balancing the learning of distinct and shared traits. Specifically, we propose a Hyper-Half Low-Rank Adaptation structure, where one half is a role-specific module generated by a lightweight hyper-network, and the other half is a trainable role-shared module. The role-specific module is devised to represent distinct persona signatures, while the role-shared module serves to capture common traits. Moreover, to better reflect distinct personalities across different roles, we design a hyper-contrastive learning mechanism to help the hyper-network distinguish their unique characteristics. Extensive experimental results on both English and Chinese available benchmarks demonstrate the superiority of our framework. Further GPT -4 evaluations and visual analyses also verify the capability of HyCoRA to capture role characteristics.

Direction-of-Arrival (DOA) estimation is critical in spatial audio and acoustic signal processing, with wide-ranging applications in real-world. Most existing DOA models are trained on synthetic data by convolving clean speech with room impulse responses (RIRs), which limits their generalizability due to constrained acoustic diversity. In this paper, we revisit DOA estimation using a recently introduced dataset constructed with the assistance of large language models (LLMs), which provides more realistic and diverse spatial audio scenes. We benchmark several representative neural-based DOA methods on this dataset and propose LightDOA, a lightweight DOA estimation model based on depthwise separable convolutions, specifically designed for mutil-channel input in varying environments. Experimental results show that LightDOA achieves satisfactory accuracy and robustness across various acoustic scenes while maintaining low computational complexity. This study not only highlights the potential of spatial audio synthesized with the assistance of LLMs in advancing robust and efficient DOA estimation research, but also highlights LightDOA as efficient solution for resource-constrained applications.

Abstract--Weeds significantly reduce crop yields worldwide and pose major challenges to sustainable agriculture. Traditional weed management methods, primarily relying on chemical herbicides, risk environmental contamination and lead to the emergence of herbicide-resistant species. Precision weeding, leveraging computer vision and machine learning methods, offers a promising eco-friendly alternative but is often limited by reliance on high-power computational platforms. This work presents an optimized, low-power edge AI system for weeds detection based on the YOLOv8n object detector deployed on the STM32U575ZI microcontroller . Several compression techniques are applied to the detection model, including structured pruning, integer quantization and input image resolution scaling in order to meet strict hardware constraints. The model is trained and evaluated on the CropAndWeed dataset with 74 plant species, achieving a balanced trade-off between detection accuracy and efficiency. Our system supports real-time, in-situ weeds detection with a minimal energy consumption of 51.8mJ per inference, enabling scalable deployment in power-constrained agricultural environments. EEDS are widespread and persistent plants, known for their rapid reproduction and effective seed dispersal strategies. They are among the primary contributors to crop yield loss globally, posing a significant challenge for farmers and agricultural stakeholders [1].

Until recently, fine-tuned BERT-like models provided state-of-the-art performance on text classification tasks. With the rise of instruction-tuned decoder-only models, commonly known as large language models (LLMs), the field has increasingly moved toward zero-shot and few-shot prompting. However, the performance of LLMs on text classification, particularly on less-resourced languages, remains under-explored. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of current language models on text classification tasks across several South Slavic languages. We compare openly available fine-tuned BERT-like models with a selection of open-source and closed-source LLMs across three tasks in three domains: sentiment classification in parliamentary speeches, topic classification in news articles and parliamentary speeches, and genre identification in web texts. Our results show that LLMs demonstrate strong zero-shot performance, often matching or surpassing fine-tuned BERT-like models. Moreover, when used in a zero-shot setup, LLMs perform comparably in South Slavic languages and English. However, we also point out key drawbacks of LLMs, including less predictable outputs, significantly slower inference, and higher computational costs. Due to these limitations, fine-tuned BERT-like models remain a more practical choice for large-scale automatic text annotation.

Accurate interpretation of Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) is critical for aviation safety, yet their condensed and cryptic language poses significant challenges to both manual and automated processing. Existing automated systems are typically limited to shallow parsing, failing to extract the actionable intelligence needed for operational decisions. We formalize the complete interpretation task as deep parsing, a dual-reasoning challenge requiring both dynamic knowledge grounding (linking the NOTAM to evolving real-world aeronautical data) and schema-based inference (applying static domain rules to deduce operational status). To tackle this challenge, we propose NOTAM-Evolve, a self-evolving framework that enables a large language model (LLM) to autonomously master complex NOTAM interpretation. Leveraging a knowledge graph-enhanced retrieval module for data grounding, the framework introduces a closed-loop learning process where the LLM progressively improves from its own outputs, minimizing the need for extensive human-annotated reasoning traces. In conjunction with this framework, we introduce a new benchmark dataset of 10,000 expert-annotated NOTAMs. Our experiments demonstrate that NOTAM-Evolve achieves a 30.4% absolute accuracy improvement over the base LLM, establishing a new state of the art on the task of structured NOTAM interpretation.

We study the problem of traffic forecasting, aiming to predict the inflow and outflow of a region in the subsequent time slot. The problem is complex due to the intricate spatial and temporal interdependence among regions. Prior works study the spatial and temporal dependency in a decouple manner, failing to capture their joint effect. In this work, we propose ST-SAM, a novel and efficient Spatial-Temporal Self-Attention Model for traffic forecasting. ST-SAM uses a region embedding layer to learn time-specific embedding from traffic data for regions. Then, it employs a spatial-temporal dependency learning module based on self-attention mechanism to capture the joint spatial-temporal dependency for both nearby and faraway regions. ST-SAM entirely relies on self-attention to capture both local and global spatial-temporal correlations, which make it effective and efficient. Extensive experiments on two real world datasets show that ST-SAM is substantially more accurate and efficient than the state-of-the-art approaches (with an average improvement of up to 15% on RMSE, 17% on MAPE, and 32 times on training time in our experiments).

Remote sensing change detection is often complicated by spatial misalignment between image pairs, especially when observations are separated by long temporal gaps such as seasonal or multi-year intervals. Conventional CNN-and transformer-based methods perform well on aligned data, but their reliance on perfect co-registration limits their applicability in practice. Existing approaches that integrate registration and change detection generally demand task-specific training and transfer poorly across domains. W e present a lightweight, modular pipeline that strengthens robustness without retraining the underlying change detection models. The framework combines rapid per-image LoRA adaptation with a compact flow refinement module trained under supervision. T o mitigate large appearance differences, we generate intermediate morphing frames via a diffusion-based semantic interpolator . Consecutive frames are aligned using a registration backbone (e.g., RoMa), and the composed flows are further corrected through a residual refinement network. The refined flow is then applied to co-register the original image pairs, enabling more reliable downstream change detection. Extensive experiments on LEVIR-CD, DSIFN-CD, and WHU-CD demonstrate that the proposed pipeline significantly improves both registration accuracy and change detection performance, especially in scenarios with substantial spatial and temporal variations.

Attribution-based explanation techniques capture key patterns to enhance visual interpretability; however, these patterns often lack the granularity needed for insight in fine-grained tasks, particularly in cases of model misclassifica-tion, where explanations may be insufficiently detailed. T o address this limitation, we propose a fine-grained counterfactual explanation framework that generates both object-level and part-level interpretability, addressing two fundamental questions: (1) which fine-grained features contribute to model misclassification, and (2) where dominant local features influence counterfactual adjustments. Our approach yields explainable counterfactuals in a non-generative manner by quantifying similarity and weighting component contributions within regions of interest between correctly classified and misclassified samples. Furthermore, we introduce a saliency partition module grounded in Shapley value contributions, isolating features with region-specific relevance. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our approach in capturing more granular, intuitively meaningful regions, surpassing fine-grained methods.

Despite the rapid advancements of electrocardiogram (ECG) signal diagnosis and analysis methods through deep learning, two major hurdles still limit their clinical adoption: the lack of versatility in processing ECG signals with diverse configurations, and the inadequate detection of risk signals due to sample imbalances. Addressing these challenges, we introduce VersAtile and Risk-Sensitive cardiac diagnosis (VARS), an innovative approach that employs a graph-based representation to uniformly model heterogeneous ECG signals. VARS stands out by transforming ECG signals into versatile graph structures that capture critical diagnostic features, irrespective of signal diversity in the lead count, sampling frequency, and duration. This graph-centric formulation also enhances diagnostic sensitivity, enabling precise localization and identification of abnormal ECG patterns that often elude standard analysis methods. To facilitate representation transformation, our approach integrates denoising reconstruction with contrastive learning to preserve raw ECG information while highlighting pathognomonic patterns. We rigorously evaluate the efficacy of VARS on three distinct ECG datasets, encompassing a range of structural variations. The results demonstrate that VARS not only consistently surpasses existing state-of-the-art models across all these datasets but also exhibits substantial improvement in identifying risk signals. Additionally, VARS offers interpretability by pinpointing the exact waveforms that lead to specific model outputs, thereby assisting clinicians in making informed decisions. These findings suggest that our VARS will likely emerge as an invaluable tool for comprehensive cardiac health assessment.

We introduce LOREN, a curvature-aware zeroth-order (ZO) optimization method for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs). Existing ZO methods, which estimate gradients via finite differences using random perturbations, often suffer from high variance and suboptimal search directions. Our approach addresses these challenges by: (i) reformulating the problem of gradient preconditioning as that of adaptively estimating an anisotropic perturbation distribution for gradient estimation, (ii) capturing curvature through a low-rank block diagonal preconditioner using the framework of natural evolution strategies, and (iii) applying a REINFORCE leave-one-out (RLOO) gradient estimator to reduce variance. Experiments on standard LLM benchmarks show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art ZO methods by achieving higher accuracy and faster convergence, while cutting peak memory usage by up to 27.3% compared with MeZO-Adam.