Pavement distress significantly compromises road integrity and poses risks to drivers. Accurate prediction of pavement distress deterioration is essential for effective road management, cost reduction in maintenance, and improvement of traffic safety. However, real-world data on pavement distress is usually collected irregularly, resulting in uneven, asynchronous, and sparse spatial-temporal datasets. This hinders the application of existing spatial-temporal models, such as DCRNN, since they are only applicable to regularly and synchronously collected data. To overcome these challenges, we propose the Spatial-Temporal Graph Autoregression Network (STGAN), a novel graph neural network model designed for accurately predicting irregular pavement distress deterioration using complex spatial-temporal data. Specifically, STGAN integrates the temporal domain into the spatial domain, creating a larger graph where nodes are represented by spatial-temporal tuples and edges are formed based on a similarity-based connection mechanism. Furthermore, based on the constructed spatiotemporal graph, we formulate pavement distress deterioration prediction as a graph autoregression task, i.e., the graph size increases incrementally and the prediction is performed sequentially. This is accomplished by a novel spatial-temporal attention mechanism deployed by STGAN. Utilizing the ConTrack dataset, which contains pavement distress records collected from different locations in Shanghai, we demonstrate the superior performance of STGAN in capturing spatial-temporal correlations and addressing the aforementioned challenges. Experimental results further show that STGAN outperforms baseline models, and ablation studies confirm the effectiveness of its novel modules. Our findings contribute to promoting proactive road maintenance decision-making and ultimately enhancing road safety and resilience.

Object recognition and detection are well-studied problems with a developed set of almost standard solutions. Identity documents recognition, classification, detection, and localization are the tasks required in a number of applications, particularly, in physical access control security systems at critical infrastructure premises. In this paper, we propose the new original architecture of a model based on an artificial convolutional neural network and semantic segmentation approach for the recognition and detection of identity documents in images. The challenge with the processing of such images is the limited computational performance and the limited amount of memory when such an application is running on industrial oneboard microcomputer hardware. The aim of this research is to prove the feasibility of the proposed technique and to obtain quality metrics. The methodology of the research is to evaluate the deep learning detection model trained on the mobile identity document video dataset. The dataset contains five hundred video clips for fifty different identity document types. The numerical results from simulations are used to evaluate the quality metrics. We present the results as accuracy versus threshold of the intersection over union value. The paper reports an accuracy above 0.75 for the intersection over union (IoU) threshold value of 0.8. Besides, we assessed the size of the model and proved the feasibility of running the model on an industrial one-board microcomputer or smartphone hardware.

Fair clustering has attracted remarkable attention from the research community. Many fairness measures for clustering have been proposed; however, they do not take into account the clustering quality w.r.t. the values of the protected attribute. In this paper, we introduce a new visual-based fairness measure for fair clustering through ROC curves, namely FACROC. This fairness measure employs AUCC as a measure of clustering quality and then computes the difference in the corresponding ROC curves for each value of the protected attribute. Experimental results on several popular datasets for fairness-aware machine learning and well-known (fair) clustering models show that FACROC is a beneficial method for visually evaluating the fairness of clustering models.

Endoscopy serves as an essential procedure for evaluating the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and plays a pivotal role in identifying GI-related disorders. Recent advancements in deep learning have demonstrated substantial progress in detecting abnormalities through intricate models and data augmentation methods.This research introduces a novel approach to enhance classification accuracy using 8,000 labeled endoscopic images from the Kvasir dataset, categorized into eight distinct classes. Leveraging EfficientNetB3 as the backbone, the proposed architecture eliminates reliance on data augmentation while preserving moderate model complexity. The model achieves a test accuracy of 94.25%, alongside precision and recall of 94.29% and 94.24% respectively. Furthermore, Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanation (LIME) saliency maps are employed to enhance interpretability by defining critical regions in the images that influenced model predictions. Overall, this work highlights the importance of AI in advancing medical imaging by combining high classification accuracy with interpretability.

The escalating volume of collected healthcare textual data presents a unique challenge for automated Multi-Label Text Classification (MLTC), which is primarily due to the scarcity of annotated texts for training and their nuanced nature. Traditional machine learning models often fail to fully capture the array of expressed topics. However, Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable effectiveness across numerous Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks in various domains, which show impressive computational efficiency and suitability for unsupervised learning through prompt engineering. Consequently, these LLMs promise an effective MLTC of medical narratives. However, when dealing with various labels, different prompts can be relevant depending on the topic. To address these challenges, the proposed approach, QUAD-LLM-MLTC, leverages the strengths of four LLMs: GPT-4o, BERT, PEGASUS, and BART. QUAD-LLM-MLTC operates in a sequential pipeline in which BERT extracts key tokens, PEGASUS augments textual data, GPT-4o classifies, and BART provides topics' assignment probabilities, which results in four classifications, all in a 0-shot setting. The outputs are then combined using ensemble learning and processed through a meta-classifier to produce the final MLTC result. The approach is evaluated using three samples of annotated texts, which contrast it with traditional and single-model methods. The results show significant improvements across the majority of the topics in the classification's F1 score and consistency (F1 and Micro-F1 scores of 78.17% and 80.16% with standard deviations of 0.025 and 0.011, respectively). This research advances MLTC using LLMs and provides an efficient and scalable solution to rapidly categorize healthcare-related text data without further training.

In software engineering chatrooms, communication is often hindered by imprecise questions that cannot be answered. Recognizing key entities can be essential for improving question clarity and facilitating better exchange. However, existing research using natural language processing techniques often overlooks these software-specific nuances. In this paper, we introduce Software-specific Named Entity Recognition, Intent Detection, and Resolution Classification (SENIR), a labeling approach that leverages a Large Language Model to annotate entities, intents, and resolution status in developer chatroom conversations. To offer quantitative guidance for improving question clarity and resolvability, we build a resolution prediction model that leverages SENIR's entity and intent labels along with additional predictive features. We evaluate SENIR on the DISCO dataset using a subset of annotated chatroom dialogues. SENIR achieves an 86% F-score for entity recognition, a 71% F-score for intent detection, and an 89% F-score for resolution status classification. Furthermore, our resolution prediction model, tested with various sampling strategies (random undersampling and oversampling with SMOTE) and evaluation methods (5-fold cross-validation, 10-fold cross-validation, and bootstrapping), demonstrates AUC values ranging from 0.7 to 0.8. Key factors influencing resolution include positive sentiment and entities such as Programming Language and User Variable across multiple intents, while diagnostic entities are more relevant in error-related questions. Moreover, resolution rates vary significantly by intent: questions about API Usage and API Change achieve higher resolution rates, whereas Discrepancy and Review have lower resolution rates. A Chi-Square analysis confirms the statistical significance of these differences.

We propose a machine-learning tool that yields causal inference on text in randomized trials. Based on a simple econometric framework in which text may capture outcomes of interest, our procedure addresses three questions: First, is the text affected by the treatment? Second, which outcomes is the effect on? And third, how complete is our description of causal effects? To answer all three questions, our approach uses large language models (LLMs) that suggest systematic differences across two groups of text documents and then provides valid inference based on costly validation. Specifically, we highlight the need for sample splitting to allow for statistical validation of LLM outputs, as well as the need for human labeling to validate substantive claims about how documents differ across groups. We illustrate the tool in a proof-of-concept application using abstracts of academic manuscripts.

Understanding how urban environments are perceived in terms of safety is crucial for urban planning and policymaking. Traditional methods like surveys are limited by high cost, required time, and scalability issues. To overcome these challenges, this study introduces Large Multimodal Models (LMMs), specifically Llava 1.6 7B, as a novel approach to assess safety perceptions of urban spaces using street-view images. In addition, the research investigated how this task is affected by different socio-demographic perspectives, simulated by the model through Persona-based prompts. Without additional fine-tuning, the model achieved an average F1-score of 59.21% in classifying urban scenarios as safe or unsafe, identifying three key drivers of perceived unsafety: isolation, physical decay, and urban infrastructural challenges. Moreover, incorporating Persona-based prompts revealed significant variations in safety perceptions across the socio-demographic groups of age, gender, and nationality. Elder and female Personas consistently perceive higher levels of unsafety than younger or male Personas. Similarly, nationality-specific differences were evident in the proportion of unsafe classifications ranging from 19.71% in Singapore to 40.15% in Botswana. Notably, the model's default configuration aligned most closely with a middle-aged, male Persona. These findings highlight the potential of LMMs as a scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional methods for urban safety perceptions. While the sensitivity of these models to socio-demographic factors underscores the need for thoughtful deployment, their ability to provide nuanced perspectives makes them a promising tool for AI-driven urban planning.

Social media users and inauthentic accounts, such as bots, may coordinate in promoting their topics. Such topics may give the impression that they are organically popular among the public, even though they are astroturfing campaigns that are centrally managed. It is challenging to predict if a topic is organic or a coordinated campaign due to the lack of reliable ground truth. In this paper, we create such ground truth by detecting the campaigns promoted by ephemeral astroturfing attacks. These attacks push any topic to Twitter's (X) trends list by employing bots that tweet in a coordinated manner in a short period and then immediately delete their tweets. We manually curate a dataset of organic Twitter trends. We then create engagement networks out of these datasets which can serve as a challenging testbed for graph classification task to distinguish between campaigns and organic trends. Engagement networks consist of users as nodes and engagements as edges (retweets, replies, and quotes) between users. We release the engagement networks for 179 campaigns and 135 non-campaigns, and also provide finer-grain labels to characterize the type of the campaigns and non-campaigns. Our dataset, LEN (Large Engagement Networks), is available in the URL below. In comparison to traditional graph classification datasets, which are small with tens of nodes and hundreds of edges at most, graphs in LEN are larger. The average graph in LEN has ~11K nodes and ~23K edges. We show that state-of-the-art GNN methods give only mediocre results for campaign vs. non-campaign and campaign type classification on LEN. LEN offers a unique and challenging playfield for the graph classification problem. We believe that LEN will help advance the frontiers of graph classification techniques on large networks and also provide an interesting use case in terms of distinguishing coordinated campaigns and organic trends.

--Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have achieved significant success in machine learning, with wide applications in social networks, bioinformatics, knowledge graphs, and other fields. Most research assumes ideal closed-set environments. However, in real-world open-set environments, graph learning models face challenges in robustness and reliability due to unseen classes. This highlights the need for Graph Open-Set Recognition (GOSR) methods to address these issues and ensure effective GNN application in practical scenarios. Research in GOSR is in its early stages, with a lack of a comprehensive benchmark spanning diverse tasks and datasets to evaluate methods. Moreover, traditional methods, Graph Out-of-Distribution Detection (GOODD), GOSR, and Graph Anomaly Detection (GAD) have mostly evolved in isolation, with little exploration of their interconnections or potential applications to GOSR. T o fill these gaps, we introduce G-OSR, a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating GOSR methods at both the node and graph levels, using datasets from multiple domains to ensure fair and standardized comparisons of effectiveness and efficiency across traditional, GOODD, GOSR, and GAD methods. The results offer critical insights into the generalizability and limitations of current GOSR methods and provide valuable resources for advancing research in this field through systematic analysis of diverse approaches. RAPH learning, as a significant research direction in machine learning, has been widely applied in social network analysis, recommendation systems, bioinformatics, knowledge graphs, traffic planning, and the fields of chemistry and materials science [1]. Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have demonstrated superior performance in various node classification and graph classification tasks [2]. These methods typically follow a closed-set setting, which assumes that all test classes are among the seen classes accessible during training [3]. However, in real-world scenarios, due to undersampling, out-of-distribution, or anomalous samples, it is highly likely to encounter samples belonging to novel unseen classes, which can significantly impact the safety and robustness of models [4], as illustrated in Figure 1. Guangyao Chen is with Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. Wentao Zhang is with Peking University, Beijing, China. Zhongyi Han is with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. Rundong He and Yilong Yin are the corresponding authors. Closed-set classification cannot identify unseen classes, while open-set recognition can identify unseen classes and classify nodes belonging to seen classes.