ABSTRACT We propose a high-payload image watermarking method for textual embedding, where a semantic description of the image - which may also correspond to the input text prompt-, is embedded inside the image. In order to be able to robustly embed high payloads in large-scale images - such as those produced by modern AI generators - the proposed approach builds upon a traditional watermarking scheme that exploits orthogonal and turbo codes for improved robustness, and integrates frequency-domain embedding and perceptual masking techniques to enhance watermark imperceptibility. Experiments show that the proposed method is extremely robust against a wide variety of image processing, and the embedded text can be retrieved also after traditional and AI inpainting, permitting to unveil the semantic modification the image has undergone via image-text mismatch analysis. Index T erms-- watermarking of AI-generated content, post-generation watermarking, proactive deepfake detection, semantic manipulation detection 1. INTRODUCTION Modern AI models offer incredible benefits by enabling anyone to easily create extremely realistic images. Nonetheless, they also pose significant risks related to image misuse, including the spread of misinformation and potential public harm.

Urban railway systems increasingly rely on communication based train control (CBTC) systems, where optimal deployment of access points (APs) in tunnels is critical for robust wireless coverage. Traditional methods, such as empirical model-based optimization algorithms, are hindered by excessive measurement requirements and suboptimal solutions, while machine learning (ML) approaches often struggle with complex tunnel environments. This paper proposes a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) driven framework that integrates parabolic wave equation (PWE) channel modeling, conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) based data augmentation, and a dueling deep Q network (Dueling DQN) for AP placement optimization. The PWE method generates high-fidelity path loss distributions for a subset of AP positions, which are then expanded by the cGAN to create high resolution path loss maps for all candidate positions, significantly reducing simulation costs while maintaining physical accuracy. In the DRL framework, the state space captures AP positions and coverage, the action space defines AP adjustments, and the reward function encourages signal improvement while penalizing deployment costs. The dueling DQN enhances convergence speed and exploration exploitation balance, increasing the likelihood of reaching optimal configurations. Comparative experiments show that the proposed method outperforms a conventional Hooke Jeeves optimizer and traditional DQN, delivering AP configurations with higher average received power, better worst-case coverage, and improved computational efficiency. This work integrates high-fidelity electromagnetic simulation, generative modeling, and AI-driven optimization, offering a scalable and data-efficient solution for next-generation CBTC systems in complex tunnel environments.

Explaining why a language model produces a particular output requires local, input-level explanations. Existing methods uncover global capability circuits (e.g., indirect object identification), but not why the model answers a specific input query in a particular way. We introduce query circuits, which directly trace the information flow inside a model that maps a specific input to the output. Unlike surrogate-based approaches (e.g., sparse autoencoders), query circuits are identified within the model itself, resulting in more faithful and computationally accessible explanations. To make query circuits practical, we address two challenges. First, we introduce Normalized Deviation Faithfulness (NDF), a robust metric to evaluate how well a discovered circuit recovers the model's decision for a specific input, and is broadly applicable to circuit discovery beyond our setting. Second, we develop sampling-based methods to efficiently identify circuits that are sparse yet faithfully describe the model's behavior. Across benchmarks (IOI, arithmetic, MMLU, and ARC), we find that there exist extremely sparse query circuits within the model that can recover much of its performance on single queries. For example, a circuit covering only 1.3% of model connections can recover about 60% of performance on an MMLU questions. Overall, query circuits provide a step towards faithful, scalable explanations of how language models process individual inputs.

A critical bottleneck in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is sample inefficiency, as training high-performance agents often demands extensive environmental interactions. Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) mitigates this by building world models that simulate environmental dynamics and generate synthetic experience, improving sample efficiency. However, conventional world models process observations holistically, failing to decouple dynamic objects and temporal features from static backgrounds. This approach is computationally inefficient, especially for visual tasks where dynamic objects significantly influence rewards and decision-making performance. To address this, we introduce DyMoDreamer, a novel MBRL algorithm that incorporates a dynamic modulation mechanism to improve the extraction of dynamic features and enrich the temporal information. DyMoDreamer employs differential observations derived from a novel inter-frame differencing mask, explicitly encoding object-level motion cues and temporal dynamics. Dynamic modulation is modeled as stochastic categorical distributions and integrated into a recurrent state-space model (RSSM), enhancing the model's focus on reward-relevant dynamics. Experiments demonstrate that DyMoDreamer sets a new state-of-the-art on the Atari $100$k benchmark with a $156.6$\% mean human-normalized score, establishes a new record of $832$ on the DeepMind Visual Control Suite, and gains a $9.5$\% performance improvement after $1$M steps on the Crafter benchmark. Our code is released at https://github.com/Ultraman-Tiga1/DyMoDreamer.

Physics-informed machine learning encompasses a wide taxonomy of approaches that combine physical knowledge and learning algorithms to address two main tasks: (i) enhancing physical models (given, e.g., by systems of partial differential equations) through data-driven methods to improve their accuracy and numerical solvability; (ii) improve the learning algorithms' performance by including physical information, e.g., as additional constraint (Karniadakis et al., 2021; Meng et al., 2025). Focusing on the second class of methods, surveyed in Rai and Sahu, 2020; von Rueden, Mayer, et al., 2023, the resulting approaches turn out to be practically effective in terms of data efficiency, generalization capability and interpretability, especially in view of downstream tasks such as safe learning-based control (Nghiem et al., 2023; Drgona et al., 2025). However, theoretically quantifying the beneficial impact of physical information into learning algorithms is challenging and still an active research question (see von Rueden, Garcke, and Bauckhage, 2023 and references therein).

Time series forecasting is crucial for various applications, such as weather, traffic, electricity, and energy predictions. Currently, common time series forecasting methods are based on Transformers. However, existing approaches primarily model limited time series or fixed scales, making it more challenging to capture diverse features cross different ranges. Additionally, traditional methods like STL for complex seasonality-trend decomposition require pre-specified seasonal periods and typically handle only single, fixed seasonality. We propose the Hybrid Decomposition Dual-Stream Adaptive Transformer (DSAT-HD), which integrates three key innovations to address the limitations of existing methods: 1) A hybrid decomposition mechanism combining EMA and Fourier decomposition with RevIN normalization, dynamically balancing seasonal and trend components through noise Top-k gating; 2) A multi-scale adaptive pathway leveraging a sparse allocator to route features to four parallel Transformer layers, followed by feature merging via a sparse combiner, enhanced by hybrid attention combining local CNNs and global interactions; 3) A dual-stream residual learning framework where CNN and MLP branches separately process seasonal and trend components, coordinated by a balanced loss function minimizing expert collaboration variance. Extensive experiments on nine datasets demonstrate that DSAT-HD outperforms existing methods overall and achieves state-of-the-art performance on some datasets. Notably, it also exhibits stronger generalization capabilities across various transfer scenarios.

The European electricity power grid is transitioning towards renewable energy sources, characterized by an increasing share of off- and onshore wind and solar power. However, the weather dependency of these energy sources poses a challenge to grid stability, with so-called Dunkelflaute events -- periods of low wind and solar power generation -- being of particular concern due to their potential to cause electricity supply shortages. In this study, we investigate the impact of these events on the German electricity production in the years and decades to come. For this purpose, we adapt a recently developed generative deep learning framework to downscale climate simulations from the CMIP6 ensemble. We first compare their statistics to the historical record taken from ERA5 data. Next, we use these downscaled simulations to assess plausible future occurrences of Dunkelflaute events in Germany under the optimistic low (SSP2-4.5) and high (SSP5-8.5) emission scenarios. Our analysis indicates that both the frequency and duration of Dunkelflaute events in Germany in the ensemble mean are projected to remain largely unchanged compared to the historical period. This suggests that, under the considered climate scenarios, the associated risk is expected to remain stable throughout the century.

Existing alignment methods for preference optimization of large language models (LLMs) aim to enhance model performance by utilizing pairs of positive and negative samples. However, due to the limited capacity of models in scoring or generating responses, the quality of positive and negative samples may become similar during training, which complicates optimization for preference learning. To address this issue, we introduce SeaPO, a Strategic Error Amplification method that leverages three error types commonly occurring in LLMs to introduce specific error patterns into the model Preference Optimization. This strategy ensures that negative samples are more erroneous than positive samples and preference-based training is employed to mitigate the occurrence of these errors, thereby enhancing model performance. Evaluations across five capability dimensions and different model scales (1.5B to 14B) demonstrate that the generated data significantly improved overall model performance, particularly in terms of truthfulness, with improvements of 5-10 percentage points observed. Further analysis reveals that task performance varies depending on the error types introduced. Injecting the most common error types improves performance in related tasks, while a mix of error types leads to a broader performance enhancement: most tasks show stable improvements, while a few tasks exhibit significant gains.

Modeling event sequences of multiple event types with marked temporal point processes (MTPPs) provides a principled way to uncover governing dynamical rules and predict future events. Current neural network approaches to MTPP inference rely on training separate, specialized models for each target system. We pursue a radically different approach: drawing on amortized inference and in-context learning, we pretrain a deep neural network to infer, in-context, the conditional intensity functions of event histories from a context defined by sets of event sequences. Pretraining is performed on a large synthetic dataset of MTPPs sampled from a broad distribution of Hawkes processes. Once pretrained, our Foundation Inference Model for Point Processes (FIM-PP) can estimate MTPPs from real-world data without any additional training, or be rapidly finetuned to target systems. Experiments show that this amortized approach matches the performance of specialized models on next-event prediction across common benchmark datasets. Our pretrained model, repository and tutorials will soon be available online

The quadratic complexity of attention mechanisms limits the efficiency of Large Language Models (LLMs) on long-text tasks. Recently, methods that dynamically estimate block importance have enabled efficient block sparse attention, leading to significant acceleration in long-text pre-filling of LLMs. However, their coarse-grained estimation inevitably leads to performance degradation at high sparsity rates. In this work, we propose ProxyAttn, a training-free sparse attention algorithm that achieves more precise block estimation by compressing the dimension of attention heads. Based on our observation of the similarity among multiple attention heads, we use the scores of pooled representative heads to approximate the scores for all heads. To account for the varying sparsity among heads, we also propose a block-aware dynamic budget estimation method. By combining the scores from representative proxy heads with multi-head dynamic budgets, we achieve a more fine-grained block importance evaluation at low computational cost. Experiments on a variety of mainstream models and extensive benchmarks confirm the underlying similarity among attention heads. Leveraging a fine-grained estimation, the proposed method achieves substantial gains in performance and efficiency compared to existing methods. More precisely, ProxyAttn can achieve up to 10.3x attention acceleration and 2.4x prefilling acceleration without significant performance loss. Our code is available at https://github.com/wyxstriker/ProxyAttn.