Neural Information Processing Systems http://nips.cc/

Graph attention networks (GATs) are widely used and often appear robust to noise in node covariates and edges, yet rigorous statistical guarantees demonstrating a provable advantage of GATs over non-attention graph neural networks~(GNNs) are scarce. We partially address this gap for node regression with graph-based errors-in-variables models under simultaneous covariate and edge corruption: responses are generated from latent node-level covariates, but only noise-perturbed versions of the latent covariates are observed; and the sample graph is a random geometric graph created from the node covariates but contaminated by independent Erdős--Rényi edges. We propose and analyze a carefully designed, task-specific GAT that constructs denoised proxy features for regression. We prove that regressing the response variables on the proxies achieves lower error asymptotically in (a) estimating the regression coefficient compared to the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator on the noisy node covariates, and (b) predicting the response for an unlabelled node compared to a vanilla graph convolutional network~(GCN) -- under mild growth conditions. Our analysis leverages high-dimensional geometric tail bounds and concentration for neighbourhood counts and sample covariances. We verify our theoretical findings through experiments on synthetically generated data. We also perform experiments on real-world graphs and demonstrate the effectiveness of the attention mechanism in several node regression tasks.

Due to its low storage cost and fast search speed, cross-modal retrieval based on hashing has attracted widespread attention and is widely used in real-world applications of social media search. However, most existing hashing methods are often limited by uncomprehensive feature representations and semantic associations, which greatly restricts their performance and applicability in practical applications. To deal with this challenge, in this paper, we propose an end-to-end graph attention network hashing (EGATH) for cross-modal retrieval, which can not only capture direct semantic associations between images and texts but also match semantic content between different modalities. We adopt the contrastive language image pretraining (CLIP) combined with the Transformer to improve understanding and generalization ability in semantic consistency across different data modalities. The classifier based on graph attention network is applied to obtain predicted labels to enhance cross-modal feature representation. We construct hash codes using an optimization strategy and loss function to preserve the semantic information and compactness of the hash code. Comprehensive experiments on the NUS-WIDE, MIRFlickr25K, and MS-COCO benchmark datasets show that our EGATH significantly outperforms against several state-of-the-art methods.

This paper aims to understand how neural networks learn algorithmic reasoning by addressing two questions: How faithful are learned algorithms when they are effective, and why do neural networks fail to learn effective algorithms otherwise? To answer these questions, we use neural compilation, a technique that directly encodes a source algorithm into neural network parameters, enabling the network to compute the algorithm exactly. This enables comparison between compiled and conventionally learned parameters, intermediate vectors, and behaviors. This investigation is crucial for developing neural networks that robustly learn complexalgorithms from data. Our analysis focuses on graph neural networks (GNNs), which are naturally aligned with algorithmic reasoning tasks, specifically our choices of BFS, DFS, and Bellman-Ford, which cover the spectrum of effective, faithful, and ineffective learned algorithms. Commonly, learning algorithmic reasoning is framed as induction over synthetic data, where a parameterized model is trained on inputs, traces, and outputs produced by an underlying ground truth algorithm. In contrast, we introduce a neural compilation method for GNNs, which sets network parameters analytically, bypassing training. Focusing on GNNs leverages their alignment with algorithmic reasoning, extensive algorithmic induction literature, and the novel application of neural compilation to GNNs. Overall, this paper aims to characterize expressability-trainability gaps - a fundamental shortcoming in learning algorithmic reasoning. We hypothesize that inductive learning is most effective for parallel algorithms contained within the computational class \texttt{NC}.

Abstract--Alcohol consumption is a significant public health concern and a major cause of accidents and fatalities worldwide. This study introduces a novel video-based facial sequence analysis approach dedicated to the detection of alcohol intoxication. The method integrates facial landmark analysis via a Graph Attention Network (GA T) with spatiotemporal visual features extracted using a 3D ResNet. These features are dynamically fused with adaptive prioritization to enhance classification performance. Additionally, we introduce a curated dataset comprising 3,542 video segments derived from 202 individuals to support training and evaluation. Our model is compared against two baselines: a custom 3D-CNN and a VGGFace+LSTM architecture. Experimental results show that our approach achieves 95.82% accuracy, 0.977 precision, and 0.97 recall, outperforming prior methods. The findings demonstrate the model's potential for practical deployment in public safety systems for non-invasive, reliable alcohol intoxication detection. Alcohol consumption remains a significant public safety challenge, particularly when it negatively affects cognitive functions, physical coordination, and judgment.

ASD is a complicated neurodevelopmental disorder marked by variation in symptom presentation and neurological underpinnings, making early and objective diagnosis extremely problematic. This paper presents a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) model, incorporating Chebyshev Spectral Graph Convolution and Graph Attention Networks (GAT), to increase the classification accuracy of ASD utilizing multimodal neuroimaging and phenotypic data. Leveraging the ABIDE I dataset, which contains resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI), structural MRI (sMRI), and phenotypic variables from 870 patients, the model leverages a multi-branch architecture that processes each modality individually before merging them via concatenation. Graph structure is encoded using site-based similarity to generate a population graph, which helps in understanding relationship connections across individuals. Chebyshev polynomial filters provide localized spectral learning with lower computational complexity, whereas GAT layers increase node representations by attention-weighted aggregation of surrounding information. The proposed model is trained using stratified five-fold cross-validation with a total input dimension of 5,206 features per individual. Extensive trials demonstrate the enhanced model's superiority, achieving a test accuracy of 74.82\% and an AUC of 0.82 on the entire dataset, surpassing multiple state-of-the-art baselines, including conventional GCNs, autoencoder-based deep neural networks, and multimodal CNNs.

Child malnutrition remains a global crisis, yet existing screening methods are laborious and poorly scalable, hindering early intervention. In this work, we present Nu-triScreener, a retrieval-augmented, multi-pose graph attention network that combines CLIP-based visual embeddings, class-boosted knowledge retrieval, and context awareness to enable robust malnutrition detection and anthropometric prediction from children's images, simultaneously addressing generalizability and class-imbalance. In a clinical study, doctors rated it 4.3/5 for accuracy and 4.6/5 for efficiency, confirming its deployment readiness in low-resource settings. Trained and tested on 2,141 children from AnthroVision and additionally evaluated on diverse cross-continent populations, including ARAN and an in-house collected CampusPose dataset. It achieves 0.79 recall, 0.82 AUC, and significantly lower anthropometric RMSEs, demonstrating reliable measurement in unconstrained, pediatric settings. Cross-dataset results show up to 25% recall gain and up to 3.5 cm RMSE reduction using demographically matched knowledge bases. NutriScreener offers a scalable and accurate solution for early malnutrition detection in low-resource environments.

The real-time performance, adversarial resiliency, and privacy preservation are the most important metrics that need to be balanced to practice collision avoidance in large-scale multi-UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) systems. Current frameworks tend to prescribe monolithic solutions that are not only prohibitively computationally complex with a scaling cost of $O(n^2)$ but simply do not offer Byzantine fault tolerance. The proposed hierarchical framework presented in this paper tries to eliminate such trade-offs by stratifying a three-layered architecture. We spread the intelligence into three layers: an immediate collision avoiding local layer running on dense graph attention with latency of $<10 ms$, a regional layer using sparse attention with $O(nk)$ computational complexity and asynchronous federated learning with coordinate-wise trimmed mean aggregation, and lastly, a global layer using a lightweight Hashgraph-inspired protocol. We have proposed an adaptive differential privacy mechanism, wherein the noise level $(ε\in [0.1, 1.0])$ is dynamically reduced based on an evaluation of the measured real-time threat that in turn maximized the privacy-utility tradeoff. Through the use of Distributed Hash Table (DHT)-based lightweight audit logging instead of heavyweight blockchain consensus, the median cost of getting a $95^{th}$ percentile decision within 50ms is observed across all tested swarm sizes. This architecture provides a scalable scenario of 500 UAVs with a collision rate of $< 2.0\%$ and the Byzantine fault tolerance of $f < n/3$.

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has shown promise for large-scale network control, yet existing methods face two major limitations. First, they typically rely on assumptions leading to decay properties of local agent interactions, limiting their ability to capture long-range dependencies such as cascading power failures or epidemic outbreaks. Second, most approaches lack generalizability across network topologies, requiring retraining when applied to new graphs. We introduce STACCA (Shared Transformer Actor-Critic with Counterfactual Advantage), a unified transformer-based MARL framework that addresses both challenges. STACCA employs a centralized Graph Transformer Critic to model long-range dependencies and provide system-level feedback, while its shared Graph Transformer Actor learns a generalizable policy capable of adapting across diverse network structures. Further, to improve credit assignment during training, STACCA integrates a novel counterfactual advantage estimator that is compatible with state-value critic estimates. We evaluate STACCA on epidemic containment and rumor-spreading network control tasks, demonstrating improved performance, network generalization, and scalability. These results highlight the potential of transformer-based MARL architectures to achieve scalable and generalizable control in large-scale networked systems.