Technology
Bayesian Ego-graph Inference for Networked Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
In networked multi-agent reinforcement learning (Networked-MARL), decentralized agents must act autonomously under local observability and constrained communication over fixed physical graphs. Existing methods often assume static neighborhoods, limiting adaptability to dynamic or heterogeneous environments. While centralized frameworks can learn dynamic graphs, their reliance on global state access and centralized infrastructure is impractical in real-world decentralized systems. We propose a stochastic graph-based policy for Networked-MARL, where each agent conditions its decision on a sampled subgraph over its local physical neighborhood. Building on this formulation, we introduce \textbf{BayesG}, a decentralized actor-critic framework that learns sparse, context-aware interaction structures via Bayesian variational inference. Each agent operates over an ego-graph and samples a latent communication mask to guide message passing and policy computation. The variational distribution is trained end-to-end alongside the policy using an evidence lower bound (ELBO) objective, enabling agents to jointly learn both interaction topology and decision-making strategies. BayesG outperforms strong MARL baselines on large-scale traffic control tasks with up to 167 agents, demonstrating superior scalability, efficiency, and performance.
Bridging Crypto with ML-based Solvers: the SAT Formulation and Benchmarks
The Boolean Satisfiability Problem (SAT) plays a crucial role in cryptanalysis, enabling tasks like key recovery and distinguisher construction. Conflict-Driven Clause Learning (CDCL) has emerged as the dominant paradigm in modern SAT solving, and machine learning has been increasingly integrated with CDCL-based SAT solvers to tackle complex cryptographic problems. However, the lack of a unified evaluation framework, inconsistent input formats, and varying modeling approaches hinder fair comparison. Besides, cryptographic SAT instances also differ structurally from standard SAT problems, and the absence of standardized datasets further complicates evaluation. To address these issues, we introduce SAT4CryptoBench, the first comprehensive benchmark for assessing machine learning-based solvers in cryptanalysis.
Arizona students design app that calculates least-sweaty walking route
Cool Routes helps users find the coolest paths and reduce exposure to dangerous heat. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. The mean radiant temperature in Phoenix in the sun can go over 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .
Stratify or Die: Rethinking Data Splits in Image Segmentation
Random splitting of datasets in image segmentation often leads to unrepresentative test sets, resulting in biased evaluations and poor model generalization. While stratified sampling has proven effective for addressing label distribution imbalance in classification tasks, extending these ideas to segmentation remains challenging due to the multi-label structure and class imbalance typically present in such data. Building on existing stratification concepts, we introduce Iterative Pixel Stratification (IPS), a straightforward, label-aware sampling method tailored for segmentation tasks. Additionally, we present Wasserstein-Driven Evolutionary Stratification (WDES), a novel genetic algorithm designed to minimize the Wasserstein distance, thereby optimizing the similarity of label distributions across dataset splits. We prove that WDES is globally optimal given enough generations. Using newly proposed statistical heterogeneity metrics, we evaluate both methods against random sampling and find that WDES consistently produces more representative splits. Applying WDES across diverse segmentation tasks, including street scenes, medical imaging, and satellite imagery, leads to lower performance variance and improved model evaluation. Our results also highlight the particular value of WDES in handling small, imbalanced, and low-diversity datasets, where conventional splitting strategies are most prone to bias.
AnaCP: Toward Upper-Bound Continual Learning via Analytic Contrastive Projection
This paper studies the problem of class-incremental learning (CIL), a core setting within continual learning where a model learns a sequence of tasks, each containing a distinct set of classes. Traditional CIL methods, which do not leverage pre-trained models (PTMs), suffer from catastrophic forgetting (CF) due to the need to incrementally learn both feature representations and the classifier. The integration of PTMs into CIL has recently led to efficient approaches that treat the PTM as a fixed feature extractor combined with analytic classifiers, achieving state-of-the-art performance. However, they still face a major limitation: the inability to continually adapt feature representations to best suit the CIL tasks, leading to suboptimal performance. To address this, we propose AnaCP (Analytic Contrastive Projection), a novel method that preserves the efficiency of analytic classifiers while enabling incremental feature adaptation without gradient-based training, thereby eliminating the CF caused by gradient updates. Our experiments show that AnaCP not only outperforms existing baselines but also achieves the accuracy level of joint training, which is regarded as the upper bound of CIL.
No-Regret Thompson Sampling for Finite-Horizon Markov Decision Processes with Gaussian Processes
Thompson sampling (TS) is a powerful and widely used strategy for sequential decision-making, with applications ranging from Bayesian optimization to reinforcement learning (RL). Despite its success, the theoretical foundations of TS remain limited, particularly in settings with complex temporal structure such as RL. We address this gap by establishing no-regret guarantees for TS using models with Gaussian marginal distributions. Specifically, we consider TS in episodic RL with joint Gaussian process (GP) priors over rewards and transitions. We prove a regret bound of $\mathcal{\tilde{O}}(\sqrt{KH\Gamma(KH)})$ over $K$ episodes of horizon $H$, where $\Gamma(\cdot)$ captures the complexity of the GP model. Our analysis addresses several challenges, including the non-Gaussian nature of value functions and the recursive structure of Bellman updates, and extends classical tools such as the elliptical potential lemma to multi-output settings. This work advances the understanding of TS in RL and highlights how structural assumptions and model uncertainty shape its performance in finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes.
Neural Combinatorial Optimization for Time-Dependent Traveling Salesman Problem
The Time-Dependent Traveling Salesman Problem (TDTSP) extends the classical TSP by allowing dynamic edge weights that vary with departure time, reflecting real-world scenarios such as transportation networks, where travel times fluctuate due to congestion patterns. TDTSP violates symmetry, triangle inequality, and cyclic invariance properties of classical TSP, creating unique computational challenges. In this paper, we propose a neural model that extends MatNet from static asymmetric TSP to time-dependent settings by using an adjacency tensor to capture temporal variations, followed by a time-aware decoder. Our architecture addresses the unique challenge of asymmetry and triangle inequality violations that change dynamically over time. Beyond architectural innovations, our research reveals a critical evaluation insight: many practical TDTSP instances maintain the same optimal solution regardless of time-dependent edge weights.
GnnXemplar: Exemplars to Explanations - Natural Language Rules for Global GNN Interpretability
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are widely used for node classification, yet their opaque decision-making limits trust and adoption. While local explanations offer insights into individual predictions, global explanation methods--those that characterize an entire class--remain underdeveloped. Existing global explainers rely on motif discovery in small graphs, an approach that breaks down in large, real-world settings where subgraph repetition is rare, node attributes are high-dimensional, and predictions arise from complex structure-attribute interactions. We propose GnnXemplar, a novel global explainer inspired from Exemplar Theory from cognitive science. GnnXemplar identifies representative nodes in the GNN embedding space--exemplars--and explains predictions using natural language rules derived from their neighborhoods. Exemplar selection is framed as a coverage maximization problem over reverse $k$-nearest neighbors, for which we provide an efficient greedy approximation. To derive interpretable rules, we employ a self-refining prompt strategy using large language models (LLMs). Experiments across diverse benchmarks show that GnnXemplar significantly outperforms existing methods in fidelity, scalability, and human interpretability, as validated by a user study with 60 participants.
Space Group Equivariant Crystal Diffusion
Accelerating inverse design of crystalline materials with generative models has significant implications for a range of technologies. Unlike other atomic systems, 3D crystals are invariant to discrete groups of isometries called the space groups. Crucially, these space group symmetries are known to heavily influence materials properties. We propose SGEquiDiff, a crystal generative model which naturally handles space group constraints with space group invariant likelihoods. SGEquiDiff consists of an SE(3)-invariant, telescoping discrete sampler of crystal lattices; permutation-invariant, transformer-based autoregressive sampling of Wyckoff positions, elements, and numbers of symmetrically unique atoms; and space group equivariant diffusion of atomic coordinates. We show that space group equivariant vector fields automatically live in the tangent spaces of the Wyckoff positions. SGEquiDiff achieves state-of-the-art performance on standard benchmark datasets as assessed by quantitative proxy metrics and quantum mechanical calculations.