Multivariate cortico-muscular analysis has recently emerged as a promising approach for evaluating the corticospinal neural pathway. However, current multivariate approaches encounter challenges such as high dimensionality and limited sample sizes, thus restricting their further applications. In this paper, we propose a structured and sparse partial least squares coherence algorithm (ssPLSC) to extract shared latent space representations related to cortico-muscular interactions. Our approach leverages an embedded optimization framework by integrating a partial least squares (PLS)-based objective function, a sparsity constraint and a connectivity-based structured constraint, addressing the generalizability, interpretability and spatial structure. To solve the optimization problem, we develop an efficient alternating iterative algorithm within a unified framework and prove its convergence experimentally. Extensive experimental results from one synthetic and several real-world datasets have demonstrated that ssPLSC can achieve competitive or better performance over some representative multivariate cortico-muscular fusion methods, particularly in scenarios characterized by limited sample sizes and high noise levels. This study provides a novel multivariate fusion method for cortico-muscular analysis, offering a transformative tool for the evaluation of corticospinal pathway integrity in neurological disorders.

Deep neural networks have achieved remarkable accomplishments in practice. The success of these networks hinges on effective initialization methods, which are vital for ensuring stable and rapid convergence during training. Recently, initialization methods that maintain identity transition within layers have shown good efficiency in network training. These techniques (e.g., Fixup) set specific weights to zero to achieve identity control. However, settings of remaining weight (e.g., Fixup uses random values to initialize non-zero weights) will affect the inductive bias that is achieved only by a zero weight, which may be harmful to training. Addressing this concern, we introduce fully identical initialization (IDInit), a novel method that preserves identity in both the main and sub-stem layers of residual networks. IDInit employs a padded identity-like matrix to overcome rank constraints in non-square weight matrices. Furthermore, we show the convergence problem of an identity matrix can be solved by stochastic gradient descent. Additionally, we enhance the universality of IDInit by processing higher-order weights and addressing dead neuron problems. IDInit is a straightforward yet effective initialization method, with improved convergence, stability, and performance across various settings, including large-scale datasets and deep models.

Expressive zero-shot voice conversion (VC) is a critical and challenging task that aims to transform the source timbre into an arbitrary unseen speaker while preserving the original content and expressive qualities. Despite recent progress in zero-shot VC, there remains considerable potential for improvements in speaker similarity and speech naturalness. Moreover, existing zero-shot VC systems struggle to fully reproduce paralinguistic information in highly expressive speech, such as breathing, crying, and emotional nuances, limiting their practical applicability. To address these issues, we propose Takin-VC, a novel expressive zero-shot VC framework via adaptive hybrid content encoding and memory-augmented context-aware timbre modeling. Specifically, we introduce an innovative hybrid content encoder that incorporates an adaptive fusion module, capable of effectively integrating quantized features of the pre-trained WavLM and HybridFormer in an implicit manner, so as to extract precise linguistic features while enriching paralinguistic elements. For timbre modeling, we propose advanced memory-augmented and context-aware modules to generate high-quality target timbre features and fused representations that seamlessly align source content with target timbre. To enhance real-time performance, we advocate a conditional flow matching model to reconstruct the Mel-spectrogram of the source speech. Experimental results show that our Takin-VC consistently surpasses state-of-the-art VC systems, achieving notable improvements in terms of speech naturalness, speech expressiveness, and speaker similarity, while offering enhanced inference speed.

Hubin Zhao (hubin.zhao@ucl.ac.uk), and Luigi G. Occhipinti (lgo23@cam.ac.uk) Abstract At-home rehabilitation for post-stroke patients presents significant challenges, as continuous, personalized care is often limited outside clinical settings. Additionally, the absence of comprehensive solutions addressing diverse rehabilitation needs in home environments complicates recovery efforts. Here, we introduce a smart home platform that integrates wearable sensors, ambient monitoring, and large language model (LLM)-powered assistance to provide seamless health monitoring and intelligent support. The system leverages machine learning enabled plantar pressure arrays for motor recovery assessment (94% classification accuracy), a wearable eye-tracking module for cognitive evaluation, and ambient sensors for precise smart home control (100% operational success, <1 s latency). Additionally, the LLM-powered agent, Auto-Care, offers real-time interventions, such as health reminders and environmental adjustments, enhancing user satisfaction by 29%. This work establishes a fully integrated platform for long-term, personalized rehabilitation, offering new possibilities for managing chronic conditions and supporting aging populations. Stroke is the third leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting more than 101 million people [1, 2]. Post-stroke recovery is not only a prolonged process but also a resource-intensive one, imposing significant economic and caregiving burdens on families and healthcare systems--a challenge exacerbated by global aging [5]. For many patients, the home becomes a critical environment for rehabilitation, as opportunities for continuous and personalized care are limited outside of clinical settings [6].

Wearable silent speech systems hold significant potential for restoring communication in patients with speech impairments. However, seamless, coherent speech remains elusive, and clinical efficacy is still unproven. Here, we present an AI-driven intelligent throat (IT) system that integrates throat muscle vibrations and carotid pulse signal sensors with large language model (LLM) processing to enable fluent, emotionally expressive communication. The system utilizes ultrasensitive textile strain sensors to capture high-quality signals from the neck area and supports token-level processing for real-time, continuous speech decoding, enabling seamless, delay-free communication. In tests with five stroke patients with dysarthria, IT's LLM agents intelligently corrected token errors and enriched sentence-level emotional and logical coherence, achieving low error rates (4.2% word error rate, 2.9% sentence error rate) and a 55% increase in user satisfaction. This work establishes a portable, intuitive communication platform for patients with dysarthria with the potential to be applied broadly across different neurological conditions and in multi-language support systems. This impairment drastically restricts effective communication, lowers quality of life, substantially impedes the rehabilitation process, and can even lead to severe psychological issues [1, 2, 3, 4]. Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies have been developed to address these challenges, including letter-by-letter spelling systems utilizing head or eye tracking [5, 6, 7, 8] and neuroprosthetics powered by brain-computer interface (BCI) devices [9, 10, 11, 12].

Federated Learning (FL) is a distributed learning approach that trains neural networks across multiple devices while keeping their local data private. However, FL often faces challenges due to data heterogeneity, leading to inconsistent local optima among clients. These inconsistencies can cause unfavorable convergence behavior and generalization performance degradation. Existing studies mainly describe this issue through \textit{convergence analysis}, focusing on how well a model fits training data, or through \textit{algorithmic stability}, which examines the generalization gap. However, neither approach precisely captures the generalization performance of FL algorithms, especially for neural networks. In this paper, we introduce the first generalization dynamics analysis framework in federated optimization, highlighting the trade-offs between model stability and optimization. Through this framework, we show how the generalization of FL algorithms is affected by the interplay of algorithmic stability and optimization. This framework applies to standard federated optimization and its advanced versions, like server momentum. We find that fast convergence from large local steps or accelerated momentum enlarges stability but obtains better generalization performance. Our insights into these trade-offs can guide the practice of future algorithms for better generalization.

Learning a reward model (RM) from human preferences has been an important component in aligning large language models (LLMs). The canonical setup of learning RMs from pairwise preference data is rooted in the classic Bradley-Terry (BT) model that accepts binary feedback, i.e., the label being either Response 1 is better than Response 2, or the opposite. Such a setup inevitably discards potentially useful samples (such as "tied" between the two responses) and loses more fine-grained information (such as "slightly better"). In this paper, we propose a framework for learning RMs under ordinal feedback which generalizes the case of binary preference feedback to any arbitrary granularity. Specifically, we first identify a marginal unbiasedness condition, which generalizes the assumption of the BT model in the existing binary feedback setting. The condition validates itself via the sociological concept of the wisdom of the crowd. Under the condition, we develop a natural probability model for pairwise preference data under ordinal feedback and analyze its properties. We prove the statistical benefits of ordinal feedback in terms of reducing the Rademacher complexity compared to the case of binary feedback. The proposed learning objective and the theory also extend to hinge loss and direct policy optimization (DPO). In particular, the theoretical analysis may be of independent interest when applying to a seemingly unrelated problem of knowledge distillation to interpret the bias-variance trade-off therein. The framework also sheds light on writing guidance for human annotators. Our numerical experiments validate that fine-grained feedback leads to better reward learning for both in-distribution and out-of-distribution settings. Further experiments show that incorporating a certain proportion of samples with tied preference boosts RM learning.

Zero-shot voice conversion (VC) aims to transform the timbre of a source speaker into any previously unseen target speaker, while preserving the original linguistic content. Despite notable progress, attaining a degree of speaker similarity and naturalness on par with ground truth recordings continues to pose great challenge. In this paper, we propose CTEFM-VC, a zero-shot VC framework that leverages Content-aware Timbre Ensemble modeling and Flow Matching. Specifically, CTEFM-VC disentangles utterances into linguistic content and timbre representations, subsequently utilizing a conditional flow matching model and a vocoder to reconstruct the mel-spectrogram and waveform. To enhance its timbre modeling capability and the naturalness of generated speech, we propose a context-aware timbre ensemble modeling approach that adaptively integrates diverse speaker verification embeddings and enables the joint utilization of linguistic and timbre features through a cross-attention module. Experiments show that our CTEFM-VC system surpasses state-of-the-art VC methods in both speaker similarity and naturalness by at least 18.5% and 7.0%.

Large language models (LLMs) are emerging as few-shot learners capable of handling a variety of tasks, including comprehension, planning, reasoning, question answering, arithmetic calculations, and more. At the core of these capabilities is LLMs' proficiency in representing and understanding structural or semi-structural data, such as tables and graphs. Numerous studies have demonstrated that reasoning on tabular data or graphs is not only feasible for LLMs but also gives a promising research direction which treats these data as in-context data. The lightweight and human readable characteristics of in-context database can potentially make it an alternative for the traditional database in typical RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) settings. However, almost all current work focuses on static in-context data, which does not allow dynamic update. In this paper, to enable dynamic database update, delta encoding of database is proposed. We explore how data stored in traditional RDBMS can be encoded as in-context text and evaluate LLMs' proficiency for CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) operations on in-context databases. A benchmark named InConDB is presented and extensive experiments are conducted to show the performance of different language models in enabling in-context database by varying the database encoding method, prompting method, operation type and input data distribution, revealing both the proficiency and limitations.

Current agricultural data management and analysis paradigms are to large extent traditional, in which data collecting, curating, integration, loading, storing, sharing and analyzing still involve too much human effort and know-how. The experts, researchers and the farm operators need to understand the data and the whole process of data management pipeline to make fully use of the data. The essential problem of the traditional paradigm is the lack of a layer of orchestrational intelligence which can understand, organize and coordinate the data processing utilities to maximize data management and analysis outcome. The emerging reasoning and tool mastering abilities of large language models (LLM) make it a potentially good fit to this position, which helps a shift from the traditional user-driven paradigm to AI-driven paradigm. In this paper, we propose and explore the idea of a LLM based copilot for autonomous agricultural data management and analysis. Based on our previously developed platform of Agricultural Data Management and Analytics (ADMA), we build a proof-of-concept multi-agent system called ADMA Copilot, which can understand user's intent, makes plans for data processing pipeline and accomplishes tasks automatically, in which three agents: a LLM based controller, an input formatter and an output formatter collaborate together. Different from existing LLM based solutions, by defining a meta-program graph, our work decouples control flow and data flow to enhance the predictability of the behaviour of the agents. Experiments demonstrates the intelligence, autonomy, efficacy, efficiency, extensibility, flexibility and privacy of our system. Comparison is also made between ours and existing systems to show the superiority and potential of our system.