Knowledge distillation (KD) methods can transfer knowledge of a parameter-heavy teacher model to a light-weight student model. The status quo for feature KD methods is to utilize loss functions based on logits (i.e., pre-softmax class scores) and intermediate layer features (i.e., latent representations). Unlike previous approaches, we propose a feature KD framework for training the student's backbone using feature-based losses exclusively (i.e., without logit-based losses such as cross entropy). Leveraging recent discoveries about the geometry of latent representations, we introduce a knowledge quality metric for identifying which teacher layers provide the most effective knowledge for distillation. Experiments on three image classification datasets with four diverse student-teacher pairs, spanning convolutional neural networks and vision transformers, demonstrate our KD method achieves state-of-the-art performance, delivering top-1 accuracy boosts of up to 15% over standard approaches. We publically share our code to facilitate future work at https://github.com/Thegolfingocto/KD_wo_CE.

We introduce Graph Memory (GM), a structured non-parametric framework that augments embedding-based inference with a compact, relational memory over region-level prototypes. Rather than treating each training instance in isolation, GM summarizes the embedding space into prototype nodes annotated with reliability indicators and connected by edges that encode geometric and contextual relations. This design unifies instance retrieval, prototype-based reasoning, and graph-based label propagation within a single inductive model that supports both efficient inference and faithful explanation. Experiments on synthetic and real datasets including breast histopathology (IDC) show that GM achieves accuracy competitive with $k$NN and Label Spreading while offering substantially better calibration and smoother decision boundaries, all with an order of magnitude fewer samples. By explicitly modeling reliability and relational structure, GM provides a principled bridge between local evidence and global consistency in non-parametric learning.

Deep graph learning has advanced Alzheimer's (AD) disease classification from MRI, but most models remain correlational, confounding demographic and genetic factors with disease specific features. We present Causal-GCN, an interventional graph convolutional framework that integrates do-calculus-based back-door adjustment to identify brain regions exerting stable causal influence on AD progression. Each subject's MRI is represented as a structural connectome where nodes denote cortical and subcortical regions and edges encode anatomical connectivity. Confounders such as age, sec, and APOE4 genotype are summarized via principal components and included in the causal adjustment set. After training, interventions on individual regions are simulated by serving their incoming edges and altering node features to estimate average causal effects on disease probability. Applied to 484 subjects from the ADNI cohort, Causal-GCN achieves performance comparable to baseline GNNs while providing interpretable causal effect rankings that highlight posterior, cingulate, and insular hubs consistent with established AD neuropathology.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enhances large language models (LLMs) by pulling in external material, document, code, manuals, from vast and ever-growing corpora, to effectively answer user queries. The effectiveness of RAG depends significantly on aligning the number of retrieved documents with query characteristics: narrowly focused queries typically require fewer, highly relevant documents, whereas broader or ambiguous queries benefit from retrieving more extensive supporting information. However, the common static top-k retrieval approach fails to adapt to this variability, resulting in either insufficient context from too few documents or redundant information from too many. Motivated by these challenges, we introduce Cluster-based Adaptive Retrieval (CAR), an algorithm that dynamically determines the optimal number of documents by analyzing the clustering patterns of ordered query-document similarity distances. CAR detects the transition point within similarity distances, where tightly clustered, highly relevant documents shift toward less pertinent candidates, establishing an adaptive cut-off that scales with query complexity. On Coinbase's CDP corpus and the public MultiHop-RAG benchmark, CAR consistently picks the optimal retrieval depth and achieves the highest TES score, outperforming every fixed top-k baseline. In downstream RAG evaluations, CAR cuts LLM token usage by 60%, trims end-to-end latency by 22%, and reduces hallucinations by 10% while fully preserving answer relevance. Since integrating CAR into Coinbase's virtual assistant, we've seen user engagement jump by 200%.

Federated learning (FL) enables collaborative model training while preserving data privacy. However, it remains vulnerable to malicious clients who compromise model integrity through Byzantine attacks, data poisoning, or adaptive adversarial behaviors. Existing defense mechanisms rely on static thresholds and binary classification, failing to adapt to evolving client behaviors in real-world deployments. We propose FLARE, an adaptive reputation-based framework that transforms client reliability assessment from binary decisions to a continuous, multi-dimensional trust evaluation. FLARE integrates: (i) a multi-dimensional reputation score capturing performance consistency, statistical anomaly indicators, and temporal behavior, (ii) a self-calibrating adaptive threshold mechanism that adjusts security strictness based on model convergence and recent attack intensity, (iii) reputation-weighted aggregation with soft exclusion to proportionally limit suspicious contributions rather than eliminating clients outright, and (iv) a Local Differential Privacy (LDP) mechanism enabling reputation scoring on privatized client updates. We further introduce a highly evasive Statistical Mimicry (SM) attack, a benchmark adversary that blends honest gradients with synthetic perturbations and persistent drift to remain undetected by traditional filters. Extensive experiments with 100 clients on MNIST, CIFAR-10, and SVHN demonstrate that FLARE maintains high model accuracy and converges faster than state-of-the-art Byzantine-robust methods under diverse attack types, including label flipping, gradient scaling, adaptive attacks, ALIE, and SM. FLARE improves robustness by up to 16% and preserves model convergence within 30% of the non-attacked baseline, while achieving strong malicious-client detection performance with minimal computational overhead. https://github.com/Anonymous0-0paper/FLARE

Creating offensive advantages during open play is fundamental to football success. However, due to the highly dynamic and long-sequence nature of open play, the potential tactic space grows exponentially as the sequence progresses, making automated tactic discovery extremely challenging. To address this, we propose TacEleven, a generative framework for football open-play tactic discovery developed in close collaboration with domain experts from AJ Auxerre, designed to assist coaches and analysts in tactical decision-making. TacEleven consists of two core components: a language-controlled tactical generator that produces diverse tactical proposals, and a multimodal large language model-based tactical critic that selects the optimal proposal aligned with a high-level stylistic tactical instruction. The two components enables rapid exploration of tactical proposals and discovery of alternative open-play offensive tactics. We evaluate TacEleven across three tasks with progressive tactical complexity: counterfactual exploration, single-step discovery, and multi-step discovery, through both quantitative metrics and a questionnaire-based qualitative assessment. The results show that the TacEleven-discovered tactics exhibit strong realism and tactical creativity, with 52.50% of the multi-step tactical alternatives rated adoptable in real-world elite football scenarios, highlighting the framework's ability to rapidly generate numerous high-quality tactics for complex long-sequence open-play situations. TacEleven demonstrates the potential of creatively leveraging domain data and generative models to advance tactical analysis in sports.

Current wildfire risk assessments rely on coarse hazard maps and opaque machine learning models that optimize regional accuracy while sacrificing interpretability at the decision scale. WildfireGenome addresses these gaps through three components: (1) fusion of seven federal wildfire indicators into a sign-aligned, PCA-based composite risk label at H3 Level-8 resolution; (2) Random Forest classification of local wildfire risk; and (3) SHAP and ICE/PDP analyses to expose county-specific nonlinear driver relationships. Across seven ecologically diverse U.S. counties, models achieve accuracies of 0.755-0.878 and Quadratic Weighted Kappa up to 0.951, with principal components explaining 87-94% of indicator variance. Transfer tests show reliable performance between ecologically similar regions but collapse across dissimilar contexts. Explanations consistently highlight needleleaf forest cover and elevation as dominant drivers, with risk rising sharply at 30-40% needleleaf coverage. WildfireGenome advances wildfire risk assessment from regional prediction to interpretable, decision-scale analytics that guide vegetation management, zoning, and infrastructure planning.

Abstract--Understanding and quantifying node importance is a fundamental problem in network science and engineering, underpinning a wide range of applications such as influence maximization, social recommendation, and network dismantling. Prior research often relies on centrality measures or advanced graph embedding techniques using structural information, followed by downstream classification or regression tasks to identify critical nodes. However, these methods typically decouple node representation learning from the ranking objective and rely on the topological structure of target networks, leading to feature-task inconsistency and limited generalization across networks. This paper proposes a novel framework that leverages causal representation learning to get robust, invariant node embeddings for cross-network ranking tasks. Firstly, we introduce an influence-aware causal node embedding module within an autoencoder architecture to extract node embeddings that are causally related to node importance. Moreover, we introduce a causal ranking loss and design a unified optimization framework that jointly optimizes the reconstruction and ranking objectives, enabling mutual reinforcement between node representation learning and ranking optimization. This design allows the proposed model to be trained on synthetic networks and to generalize effectively across diverse real-world networks. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed model consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in terms of both ranking accuracy and cross-network transferability, offering new insights for network analysis and engineering applications--particularly in scenarios where the target network's structure is inaccessible in advance due to privacy or security constraints. Complex networks provide a powerful framework for modeling and analyzing a wide range of systems across diverse domains, including social networks, transportation systems, and biological networks [1]. In these networks, nodes represent entities within a real system such as individuals, infrastructure components, or functional units, while edges capture interactions or relationships between them. A key challenge in network science and engineering is identifying important nodes, as they play pivotal roles in maintaining network functionality, performance, stability, and robustness [2].

Mutual information (MI) is one of the most general ways to measure relationships between random variables, but estimating this quantity for complex systems is challenging. Denoising diffusion models have recently set a new bar for density estimation, so it is natural to consider whether these methods could also be used to improve MI estimation. Using the recently introduced information-theoretic formulation of denoising diffusion models, we show the diffusion models can be used in a straightforward way to estimate MI. In particular, the MI corresponds to half the gap in the Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) between conditional and unconditional diffusion, integrated over all Signal-to-Noise-Ratios (SNRs) in the noising process. Our approach not only passes self-consistency tests but also outperforms traditional and score-based diffusion MI estimators. Furthermore, our method leverages adaptive importance sampling to achieve scalable MI estimation, while maintaining strong performance even when the MI is high.

To bridge the temporal granularity gap in energy network design and operation based on Energy System Models, resampling of time series is required. While conventional upsampling methods are computationally efficient, they often result in significant information loss or increased noise. Advanced models such as time series generation models, Super-Resolution models and imputation models show potential, but also face fundamental challenges. The goal of time series generative models is to learn the distribution of the original data to generate high-resolution series with similar statistical characteristics. This is not entirely consistent with the definition of upsampling. Time series Super-Resolution models or imputation models can degrade the accuracy of upsampling because the input low-resolution time series are sparse and may have insufficient context. Moreover, such models usually rely on supervised learning paradigms. This presents a fundamental application paradox: their training requires the high-resolution time series that is intrinsically absent in upsampling application scenarios. To address the mentioned upsampling issue, this paper introduces a new method utilizing Generative Adversarial Transformers (GATs), which can be trained without access to any ground-truth high-resolution data. Compared with conventional interpolation methods, the introduced method can reduce the root mean square error (RMSE) of upsampling tasks by 10%, and the accuracy of a model predictive control (MPC) application scenario is improved by 13%.