Fecal incontinence, arising from a myriad of pathogenic mechanisms, has attracted considerable global attention. Despite its significance, the replication of the defecatory system for studying fecal incontinence mechanisms remains limited largely due to social stigma and taboos. Inspired by the rectum's functionalities, we have developed a soft robotic system, encompassing a power supply, pressure sensing, data acquisition systems, a flushing mechanism, a stage, and a rectal module. The innovative soft rectal module includes actuators inspired by sphincter muscles, both soft and rigid covers, and soft rectum mold. The rectal mold, fabricated from materials that closely mimic human rectal tissue, is produced using the mold replication fabrication method. Both the soft and rigid components of the mold are realized through the application of 3D-printing technology. The sphincter muscles-inspired actuators featuring double-layer pouch structures are modeled and optimized based on multilayer perceptron methods aiming to obtain high contractions ratios (100 %), high generated pressure (9.8 kPa), and small recovery time (3 s). Upon assembly, this defecation robot is capable of smoothly expelling liquid faeces, performing controlled solid fecal cutting, and defecating extremely solid long faeces, thus closely replicating the human rectum and anal canal's functions. This defecation robot has the potential to assist humans in understanding the complex defecation system and contribute to the development of well-being devices related to defecation.

The remarkable capabilities of modern large language models are rooted in their vast repositories of knowledge encoded within their parameters, enabling them to perceive the world and engage in reasoning. The inner workings of how these models store knowledge have long been a subject of intense interest and investigation among researchers. To date, most studies have concentrated on isolated components within these models, such as the Multilayer Perceptrons and attention head. In this paper, we delve into the computation graph of the language model to uncover the knowledge circuits that are instrumental in articulating specific knowledge. The experiments, conducted with GPT2 and TinyLLAMA, has allowed us to observe how certain information heads, relation heads, and Multilayer Perceptrons collaboratively encode knowledge within the model. Moreover, we evaluate the impact of current knowledge editing techniques on these knowledge circuits, providing deeper insights into the functioning and constraints of these editing methodologies. Finally, we utilize knowledge circuits to analyze and interpret language model behaviors such as hallucinations and in-context learning. We believe the knowledge circuit holds potential for advancing our understanding of Transformers and guiding the improved design of knowledge editing. Code and data are available in https://github.com/zjunlp/KnowledgeCircuits.

Representations embedded in the hyperbolic space have demonstrated significant improvements over their Euclidean counterparts across a variety of datasets, including images [1], natural languages [2], and complex tabular data such as single-cell sequencing [3]. On the other hand, learning and optimization on hyperbolic spaces are typically more involved than that on Euclidean spaces. Problems that are convex in Euclidean spaces become constrained non-convex problems in hyperbolic spaces. The hyperbolic Support Vector Machine (HSVM), as explored in recent studies [4, 5], exemplifies such challenges by presenting as a non-convex constrained programming problem that has been solved predominantly based on projected gradient descent. Attempts have been made to alleviate its non-convex nature through reparametrization [6] or developing a hyperbolic perceptron algorithm that converges to a separator with finetuning using adversarial samples to approximate the large-margin solution [7].

Fast feedforward networks (FFFs) are a class of neural networks that exploit the observation that different regions of the input space activate distinct subsets of neurons in wide networks. FFFs partition the input space into separate sections using a differentiable binary tree of neurons and during inference descend the binary tree in order to improve computational efficiency. Inspired by Mixture of Experts (MoE) research, we propose the incorporation of load balancing and Master Leaf techniques into the FFF architecture to improve performance and simplify the training process. We reproduce experiments found in literature and present results on FFF models enhanced using these techniques. The proposed architecture and training recipe achieves up to 16.3% and 3% absolute classification accuracy increase in training and test accuracy, respectively, compared to the original FFF architecture. Additionally, we observe a smaller variance in the results compared to those reported in prior research. These findings demonstrate the potential of integrating MoE-inspired techniques into FFFs for developing more accurate and efficient models.

In this paper, we introduce Wav-KAN, an innovative neural network architecture that leverages the Wavelet Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (Wav-KAN) framework to enhance interpretability and performance. Traditional multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) and even recent advancements like Spl-KAN face challenges related to interpretability, training speed, robustness, computational efficiency, and performance. Wav-KAN addresses these limitations by incorporating wavelet functions into the Kolmogorov-Arnold network structure, enabling the network to capture both high-frequency and low-frequency components of the input data efficiently. Wavelet-based approximations employ orthogonal or semi-orthogonal basis and maintain a balance between accurately representing the underlying data structure and avoiding overfitting to the noise. While continuous wavelet transform (CWT) has a lot of potentials, we also employed discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for multiresolution analysis, which obviated the need for recalculation of the previous steps in finding the details. Analogous to how water conforms to the shape of its container, Wav-KAN adapts to the data structure, resulting in enhanced accuracy, faster training speeds, and increased robustness compared to Spl-KAN and MLPs. Our results highlight the potential of Wav-KAN as a powerful tool for developing interpretable and high-performance neural networks, with applications spanning various fields. This work sets the stage for further exploration and implementation of Wav-KAN in frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow, aiming to make wavelets in KAN as widespread as activation functions like ReLU and sigmoid in universal approximation theory (UAT). The codes to replicate the simulations are available at https://github.com/zavareh1/Wav-KAN.

However, according to the results of Kolmogorov and Vitushkin, the representation of generic smooth functions by KAN implementations using analytic functions constrained to a finite number of cutoff points cannot be exact. Hence, the convergence of KAN throughout the training process may be limited. This paper explores the relevance of smoothness in KANs, proposing that smooth, structurally informed KANs can achieve equivalence to MLPs in specific function classes. By leveraging inherent structural knowledge, KANs may reduce the data required for training and mitigate the risk of generating hallucinated predictions, thereby enhancing model reliability and performance in computational biomedicine.

In-context learning (ICL), the remarkable ability to solve a task from only input exemplars, has commonly been assumed to be a unique hallmark of Transformer models. In this study, we demonstrate that multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) can also learn in-context. Moreover, we find that MLPs, and the closely related MLP-Mixer models, learn in-context competitively with Transformers given the same compute budget. We further show that MLPs outperform Transformers on a subset of ICL tasks designed to test relational reasoning. These results suggest that in-context learning is not exclusive to Transformers and highlight the potential of exploring this phenomenon beyond attention-based architectures. In addition, MLPs' surprising success on relational tasks challenges prior assumptions about simple connectionist models. Altogether, our results endorse the broad trend that ``less inductive bias is better" and contribute to the growing interest in all-MLP alternatives to task-specific architectures.

Abstract--Music genre classification is an area that utilizes machine learning models and techniques for the processing of audio signals, in which applications range from content recommendation systems to music recommendation systems. In this research I explore various machine learning algorithms for the purpose of music genre classification, using features extracted from audio signals.The systems are namely, a Multilayer Perceptron (built from scratch), a k-Nearest Neighbours (also built from scratch), a Convolutional Neural Network and lastly a Random Forest wide model. In order to process the audio signals, feature extraction methods such as Short-Time Fourier Transform, and the extraction of Mel Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs), is performed. Through this extensive research, I aim to asses the robustness of machine learning models for genre classification, and to compare their results. Music is a form of expression, a universal language that is easy to translate into cultural stories and different emotions.

Deep learning methods have been exerting their strengths in long-term time series forecasting. However, they often struggle to strike a balance between expressive power and computational efficiency. Resorting to multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) provides a compromising solution, yet they suffer from two critical problems caused by the intrinsic point-wise mapping mode, in terms of deficient contextual dependencies and inadequate information bottleneck. Here, we propose the Coarsened Perceptron Network (CP-Net), featured by a coarsening strategy that alleviates the above problems associated with the prototype MLPs by forming information granules in place of solitary temporal points. The CP-Net utilizes primarily a two-stage framework for extracting semantic and contextual patterns, which preserves correlations over larger timespans and filters out volatile noises. This is further enhanced by a multi-scale setting, where patterns of diverse granularities are fused towards a comprehensive prediction. Based purely on convolutions of structural simplicity, CP-Net is able to maintain a linear computational complexity and low runtime, while demonstrates an improvement of 4.1% compared with the SOTA method on seven forecasting benchmarks.

Heterogeneous datasets emerge in various machine learning or optimization applications that feature different data sources, various data types and complex relationships between variables. In practice, heterogeneous datasets are often partitioned into smaller well-behaved ones that are easier to process. However, some applications involve expensive-to-generate or limited size datasets, which motivates methods based on the whole dataset. The first main contribution of this work is a modeling graph-structured framework that generalizes state-of-the-art hierarchical, tree-structured, or variable-size frameworks. This framework models domains that involve heterogeneous datasets in which variables may be continuous, integer, or categorical, with some identified as meta if their values determine the inclusion/exclusion or affect the bounds of other so-called decreed variables. Excluded variables are introduced to manage variables that are either included or excluded depending on the given points. The second main contribution is the graph-structured distance that compares extended points with any combination of included and excluded variables: any pair of points can be compared, allowing to work directly in heterogeneous datasets with meta variables. The contributions are illustrated with some regression experiments, in which the performance of a multilayer perceptron with respect to its hyperparameters is modeled with inverse distance weighting and $K$-nearest neighbors models.