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Efficient Last-Iterate Convergence in Solving Extensive-Form Games

Neural Information Processing Systems

To establish last-iterate convergence for Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR) algorithms in learning a Nash equilibrium (NE) of extensive-form games (EFGs), recent studies reformulate learning an NE of the original EFG as learning the NEs of a sequence of (perturbed) regularized EFGs. Hence, proving last-iterate convergence in solving the original EFG reduces to proving last-iterate convergence in solving (perturbed) regularized EFGs. However, these studies only establish last-iterate convergence for Online Mirror Descent (OMD)-based CFR algorithms instead of Regret Matching (RM)-based CFR algorithms in solving perturbed regularized EFGs, resulting in a poor empirical convergence rate, as RM-based CFR algorithms typically outperform OMD-based CFR algorithms. In addition, as solving multiple perturbed regularized EFGs is required, fine-tuning across multiple perturbed regularized EFGs is infeasible, making parameter-free algorithms highly desirable. This paper show that CFR+, a classical parameter-free RM-based CFR algorithm, achieves last-iterate convergence in learning an NE of perturbed regularized EFGs. This is the first parameter-free last-iterate convergence for RM-based CFR algorithms in perturbed regularized EFGs. Leveraging CFR+ to solve perturbed regularized EFGs, we get Reward Transformation CFR+ (RTCFR+). Importantly, we extend prior work on the parameter-free property of CFR+, enhancing its stability, which is vital for the empirical convergence of RTCFR+. Experiments show that RTCFR+ exhibits a significantly faster empirical convergence rate than existing algorithms that achieve theoretical last-iterate convergence.


Towards Reliable Code-as-Policies: ANeuro-Symbolic Framework for Embodied Task Planning

Neural Information Processing Systems

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have enabled the automatic generation of executable code for task planning and control in embodied agents such as robots, demonstrating the potential of LLM-based embodied intelligence. However, these LLM-based code-as-policies approaches often suffer from limited environmental grounding, particularly in dynamic or partially observable settings, leading to suboptimal task success rates due to incorrect or incomplete code generation. In this work, we propose a neuro-symbolic embodied task planning framework that incorporates explicit symbolic verification and interactive validation processes during code generation. In the validation phase, the framework generates exploratory code that actively interacts with the environment to acquire missing observations while preserving task-relevant states. This integrated process enhances the grounding of generated code, resulting in improved task reliability and success rates in complex environments. We evaluate our framework on RLBench and in realworld settings across dynamic, partially observable scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework improves task success rates by 46.2% over Code as Policies baselines and attains over 86.8% executability of task-relevant actions, thereby enhancing the reliability of task planning in dynamic environments.


LoMix: Learnable Weighted Multi-Scale Logits Mixing for Medical Image Segmentation

Neural Information Processing Systems

Yet, training still treats these logits in isolation--either supervising only the final, highest-resolution logits or applying deep supervision with identical loss weights at every scale--without exploring mixed-scale combinations. Consequently, the decoder output misses the complementary cues that arise only when coarse and fine predictions are fused. To address this issue, we introduce LoMix (Logits Mixing), a Neural Architecture Search (NAS)-inspired, differentiable plug-and-play module that generates new mixed-scale outputs and learns how exactly each of them should guide the training process. More precisely, LoMix mixes the multi-scale decoder logits with four lightweight fusion operators: addition, multiplication, concatenation, and attentionbased weighted fusion, yielding a rich set of synthetic "mutant" maps. Every original or mutant map is given a softplus loss weight that is co-optimized with network parameters, mimicking a one-step architecture search that automatically discovers the most useful scales, mixtures, and operators. Plugging LoMix into recent U-shaped architectures (i.e., PVT-V2-B2 backbone with EMCAD decoder) on Synapse 8-organ dataset improves DICE by +4.2% over single-output supervision, +2.2% over deep supervision, and +1.5% over equally weighted additive fusion, all with zero inference overhead. When training data are scarce (e.g., one or two labeled scans, 5% of the trainset), the advantage grows to +9.23%, underscoring LoMix's data efficiency. Across four benchmarks and diverse U-shaped networks, LoMiX improves DICE by up to +13.5% over single-output supervision, confirming that learnable weighted mixed-scale fusion generalizes broadly while remaining data efficient, fully interpretable, and overhead-free at inference. Our implementation is available at https://github.com/SLDGroup/LoMix.



LoMix: Learnable Weighted Multi-Scale Logits Mixing for Medical Image Segmentation

Neural Information Processing Systems

Yet, training still treats these logits in isolation--either supervising only the final, highest-resolution logits or applying deep supervision with identical loss weights at every scale--without exploring mixed-scale combinations. Consequently, the decoder output misses the complementary cues that arise only when coarse and fine predictions are fused. To address this issue, we introduce LoMix (Logits Mixing), a Neural Architecture Search (NAS)-inspired, differentiable plug-and-play module that generates new mixed-scale outputs and learns how exactly each of them should guide the training process. More precisely, LoMix mixes the multi-scale decoder logits with four lightweight fusion operators: addition, multiplication, concatenation, and attention-based weighted fusion, yielding a rich set of synthetic "mutant" maps. Every original or mutant map is given a softplus loss weight that is co-optimized with network parameters, mimicking a one-step architecture search that automatically discovers the most useful scales, mixtures, and operators. Plugging LoMix into recent U-shaped architectures (i.e., PVT-V2-B2 backbone with EMCAD decoder) on Synapse 8-organ dataset improves DICE by +4.2% over single-output supervision, +2.2% over deep supervision, and +1.5% over equally weighted additive fusion, all with zero inference overhead. When training data are scarce (e.g., one or two labeled scans, 5% of the trainset), the advantage grows to +9.23%, underscoring LoMix's data efficiency. Across four benchmarks and diverse U-shaped networks, LoMiX improves DICE by up to +13.5% over single-output supervision, confirming that learnable weighted mixed-scale fusion generalizes broadly while remaining data efficient, fully interpretable, and overhead-free at inference. Our implementation is available at https://github.com/SLDGroup/LoMix.


Caveman casino! Humans began gambling 12,000 YEARS ago, scientists say - as they discover ancient dice in the western Great Plains

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Sydney Sweeney's role is cut from The Devil Wears Prada 2 Driver who hit and killed jogger father-of-two sues victim's estate claiming incident left him with severe PTSD New'Hollywood dose' pill: A-listers hooked on'youth elixir' that dermatologists say is anti-aging, shrinks pores, smooths wrinkles... and even banishes rosacea Alarm over popular new coffee chain invading the US... as experts warn of chilling secret behind its $1.99 brew Vance grounded at White House as Iran peace talks in turmoil and Trump declares: 'I expect to be bombing' Jordon Hudson extends her control over Bill Belichick's empire with secret move that is set to leave his family and friends furious Ark of the Covenant's final resting place pinpointed by archaeologists as fresh search begins Life-threatening cantaloupe recall in four states upgraded to FDA's highest risk level... 'reasonable probability of death' Truth about your Mounjaro injection site: Our expert doctors reveal exactly where you should inject yourself for the best results, what to do if your weight loss has slowed down... and the areas you should NEVER jab Ritzy Bay Area town torn apart after teacher's daughter, 16, crashed car while speeding and killed four friends... then posted a TikTok video that poured fuel on the flames Beloved Republican mayor of small Great Plains town could be deported over'mistake' he insists was an innocent one Humiliating moment runner celebrates winning marathon... only to be pipped at the line by rival in brutal finish The new'posh' drug that's easier to order than Uber Eats - and why all my middle-class friends have ditched booze and cocaine for it: JANA HOCKING Why desperate Fergie's next move will be her biggest bombshell yet... and this is the only thing that can stop her: AMANDA PLATELL RED MORE: Man's best friend has been in Britain for 14,300 years Humans began gambling 12,000 years ago, experts say - after discovering dice that date back to the last Ice Age. A team from Colorado State University have unearthed the earliest evidence of two-sided dice crafted from small pieces of bone. They were originally found at an archaeological site on the western Great Plains of America, predating the current oldest known dice by more than 6,000 years. The discovery indicates that gambling and games of chance have been a persistent feature of North American culture since the end of the last Ice Age, experts say. 'Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations,' researcher Robert Madden said.


Multi-view Masked Contrastive Representation Learning for Endoscopic Video Analysis

Neural Information Processing Systems

Endoscopic video analysis can effectively assist clinicians in disease diagnosis and treatment, and has played an indispensable role in clinical medicine. Unlike regular videos, endoscopic video analysis presents unique challenges, including complex camera movements, uneven distribution of lesions, and concealment, and it typically relies on contrastive learning in self-supervised pretraining as its mainstream technique. However, representations obtained from contrastive learning enhance the discriminability of the model but often lack fine-grained information, which is suboptimal in the pixel-level prediction tasks. In this paper, we develop a Multi-view Masked Contrastive Representation Learning (M$^2$CRL) framework for endoscopic video pre-training. Specifically, we propose a multi-view mask strategy for addressing the challenges of endoscopic videos. We utilize the frame-aggregated attention guided tube mask to capture global-level spatiotemporal sensitive representation from the global views, while the random tube mask is employed to focus on local variations from the local views. Subsequently, we combine multi-view mask modeling with contrastive learning to obtain endoscopic video representations that possess fine-grained perception and holistic discriminative capabilities simultaneously. The proposed M$^2$CRL is pre-trained on 7 publicly available endoscopic video datasets and fine-tuned on 3 endoscopic video datasets for 3 downstream tasks. Notably, our M$^2$CRL significantly outperforms the current state-of-the-art self-supervised endoscopic pre-training methods, e.g., Endo-FM (3.5% F1 for classification, 7.5% Dice for segmentation, and 2.2% F1 for detection) and other self-supervised methods, e.g., VideoMAE V2 (4.6% F1 for classification, 0.4% Dice for segmentation, and 2.1% F1 for detection).



Don't Roll the Dice, Ask Twice: The Two-Query Distortion of Matching Problems and Beyond

Neural Information Processing Systems

In most social choice settings, the participating agents express their preferences over the different alternatives in the form of linear orderings. While this clearly simplifies preference elicitation, it inevitably leads to poor performance with respect to optimizing a cardinal objective, such as the social welfare, since the values of the agents remain virtually unknown. This loss in performance because of lack of information is measured by distortion. A recent array of works put forward the agenda of designing mechanisms that learn the values of the agents for a small number of alternatives via queries, and use this limited extra information to make better-informed decisions, thus improving distortion. Following this agenda, in this work we focus on a class of combinatorial problems that includes most well-known matching problems and several of their generalizations, such as One-Sided Matching, Two-Sided Matching, General Graph Matching, and k-Constrained Resource Allocation. We design two-query mechanisms that achieve the best-possible worst-case distortion in terms of social welfare, and outperform the best-possible expected distortion achieved by randomized ordinal mechanisms.


I'm a millennial tech nerd. Here are 15 geeky gifts and gadgets I'd buy for myself!

PCWorld

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Here are 15 geeky gifts and gadgets I'd buy for myself! 'Tis the season to get the perfect nerd gift. It could be for yourself or even your geeky friends. I don't know about you, but I love the holidays.