GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
Revealing Hierarchical Structure of Leaf Venations in Plant Science via Label-Efficient Segmentation: Dataset and Method
Authors: Weizhen Liu; Ao Li; Ze Wu; Yue Li; Baobin Ge; Guangyu Lan; Shilin Chen; Minghe Li; Yunfei Liu; Xiaohui Yuan; Nanqing Dong
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Hierarchical leaf vein segmentation is a crucial but under-explored task in agricultural sciences, where analysis of the hierarchical structure of plant leaf venation can contribute to plant breeding. While current segmentation techniques rely on data-driven models, there is no publicly available dataset specifically designed for hierarchical leaf vein segmentation. To address this gap, we introduce the HierArchical Leaf Vein Segmentation (HALVS) dataset, the first public hierarchical leaf vein segmentation dataset. HALVS comprises 5,057 real-scanned high-resolution leaf images collected from three plant species: soybean, sweet cherry, and London planetree. It also includes human-annotated ground truth for three orders of leaf veins, with a total labeling effort of 83.8 person-days. Based on HALVS, we further develop a label-efficient learning paradigm that leverages partial label information, i.e. missing annotations for tertiary veins. Empirical studies are performed on HALVS, revealing new observations, challenges, and research directions on leaf vein segmentation. Our dataset and code are available at https://github.com/WeizhenLiuBioinform/ HALVS-Hierarchical-Vein-Segment.
Benchmarking Fish Dataset and Evaluation Metric in Keypoint Detection - Towards Precise Fish Morphological Assessment in Aquaculture Breeding
Authors: Weizhen Liu; Jiayu Tan; Guangyu Lan; Ao Li; Dongye Li; Le Zhao; Xiaohui Yuan; Nanqing Dong
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Accurate phenotypic analysis in aquaculture breeding necessitates the quantification of subtle morphological phenotypes. Existing datasets suffer from limitations such as small scale, limited species coverage, and inadequate annotation of keypoints for measuring refined and complex morphological phenotypes of fish body parts. To address this gap, we introduce FishPhenoKey, a comprehensive dataset comprising 23,331 high-resolution images spanning six fish species. Notably, FishPhenoKey includes 22 phenotype-oriented annotations, enabling the capture of intricate morphological phenotypes. Motivated by the nuanced evaluation of these subtle morphologies, we also propose a new evaluation metric, Percentage of Measured Phenotypes (PMP). It is designed to assess the accuracy of individual keypoint positions and is highly sensitive to the phenotype measured using the corresponding keypoints. To enhance keypoint detection accuracy, we further propose a novel loss, Anatomically-Calibrated Regularization (ACR), that can be integrated into keypoint detection models, leveraging biological insights to refine keypoint localization. Our contributions set a new benchmark in fish phenotype analysis, addressing the challenges of precise morphological quantification and opening new avenues for research in sustainable aquaculture and genetic studies. Our dataset and code are available at https://github.com/WeizhenLiuBioinform/FishPhenotype-Detect.
RisQNet: Rescuing SMEs from Financial Shocks with a Novel Networked-Loan Risk Assessment
Authors: Zhaoyuan Lu; Taijun Li; Jingzhen Zhang; Moyang Liu; Xiang Li; Linyi Cui; Junqi Chen; Zhibin Niu
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: In the face of economic downturns, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) within interconnected networked-loans are vulnerable to cascading debt crises, exacerbated by factors like social media-induced financial shocks. Traditional risk assessment models, which mainly rely on financial data, inadequately predict such crises, as evidenced by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023. To address this issue, we developed RisQNet, a model that uses temporal graph networks to incorporate diverse risks, including real-time media influences. This approach not only advances risk prediction through news feature extraction and large language models but also enhances risk management strategies with intuitive visualization tools. Validated on a dataset with a total loan volume of USD 3 trillion, RisQNet outperforms the state-of-the-art baseline and achieves 87.1% of AUC. Our collaborative effort with financial regulators and the SME community underpins the model's development, aligning with the UN SDG 8. RisQNet represents a significant step forward in leveraging AI for financial stability, offering a promising approach to combat the propagation of debt crises in financial networks.
Understanding Public Perception Towards Weather Disasters Through the Lens of Metaphor
Authors: Rui Mao; Qika Lin; Qiawen Liu; Gianmarco Mengaldo; Erik Cambria
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Extreme weather can lead to weather-induced disasters. These have a profound impact on communities worldwide, causing loss of life, damage to properties and infrastructure, and disruption of daily activities. In alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, addressing the increasing frequency and severity of these events, exacerbated by climate change, is imperative. Exploring public perception and responses to weather disasters becomes crucial for policymakers to formulate effective strategies that not only mitigate the impacts but also contribute to the goal of ensuring sustainable and resilient communities. Social media, as a pervasive and real-time communication platform, has gathered a large amount of public opinion. In this work, we analyze public perception towards weather disasters based on tweets and metaphors. Metaphor, as a linguistic device, plays a pivotal role in unraveling cognitive processes and understanding how individuals perceive and make sense of concepts. We focus on tweets related to four distinct types of weather disasters i.e., floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires, aiming to extract nuanced insights regarding public perceptions, concerns, and attitudes towards these specific events. We also deliver constructive recommendations, based on the insights.
Domain Adaptation with Joint Loss for Consistent Regression and Ordinal Classification in the Proxy Means Test for Poverty Targeting
Authors: Siti Mariyah; Wayne Wobcke
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Previous domain adaptation methods are designed to work for a single task, either classification or regression. In this paper, the task of the learner is to produce both an estimation and an ordinal classification of instances that are consistent in that the classification of instances into quantiles is derived from the estimated values. We propose an extension of the boosting for transfer method (TrAdaBoost), Joint Quantile Loss Boosting Domain Adaptation (TrAdaBoost.JQL) for regression transfer learning, that aims to jointly minimize regression and ordinal classification errors. Motivated by the real-world problem of poverty targeting using the Proxy Means Test, we empirically show that TrAdaBoost.JQL can consistently reduce RMSE and inclusion and exclusion errors for estimating per capita household expenditure, across a wide variety of districts in Indonesia, compared to other reweighting-based and invariant feature representation-based domain adaptation methods. We design TrAdaBoost.JQL to be flexible as to the chosen eligibility (poor) threshold used in poverty targeting practice and as to whether estimation or ordinal classification accuracy is prioritized.
Ensuring Fairness Stability for Disentangling Social Inequality in Access to Education: the FAiRDAS General Method
Authors: Eleonora Misino; Roberta Calegari; Michele Lombardi; Michela Milano
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd) have revolutionized educational practices using machine learning to extract insights from students' activities and behaviours. Performance prediction, a key domain within AIEd, aims to enhance student achievement levels and address sustainable development goals related to education, health, gender equality, and economic growth. However, the potential of AIEd to contribute to these goals is hindered by the lack of attention to fairness in prediction algorithms, leading to educational inequality. To address this gap, we introduce FAiRDAS a general framework that models long-term fairness as an abstract dynamic system. Our approach, illustrated through a case study in AIEd with real data, offers a customizable solution to promote long-term fairness while promoting the stability of mitigation actions over time.
Unmasking Societal Biases in Respiratory Support for ICU Patients through Social Determinants of Health
Authors: Mira Moukheiber; Lama Moukheiber; Dana Moukheiber; Hyung-Chul Lee
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: In critical care settings, where precise and timely interventions are crucial for health outcomes, evaluating disparities in patient outcomes is important. Current approaches often fall short in comprehensively understanding and evaluating the impact of respiratory support interventions on individuals affected by social determinants of health. Attributes such as gender, race, and age are commonly assessed and essential, but provide only a partial view of the complexities faced by diverse populations. In this study, we focus on two clinically motivated tasks: prolonged mechanical ventilation and successful weaning. We also perform fairness audits on the models' predictions across demographic groups and social determinants of health to better understand the health inequities in respiratory interventions in the intensive care unit. We also release a temporal benchmark dataset, verified by clinical experts, to enable benchmarking of clinical respiratory intervention tasks.
Deploying Mobility-On-Demand for All by Optimizing Paratransit Services
Authors: Sophie Pavia; David Rogers; Amutheezan Sivagnanam; Michael Wilbur; Danushka Edirimanna; Youngseo Kim; Philip Pugliese; Samitha Samaranayake; Aron Laszka; Ayan Mukhopadhyay; Abhishek Dubey
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: While on-demand ride-sharing services have become popular in recent years, traditional on-demand transit services cannot be used by everyone, e.g., people who use wheelchairs. Paratransit services, operated by public transit agencies, are a critical infrastructure that offers door-to-door transportation assistance for individuals who face challenges in using standard transit routes. However, with declining ridership and mounting financial pressure, public transit agencies in the USA struggle to operate existing services. We collaborate with a public transit agency from the southern USA, highlight the specific nuances of paratransit optimization, and present a vehicle routing problem formulation for optimizing paratransit. We validate our approach using real-world data from the transit agency, present results from an actual pilot deployment of the proposed approach in the city, and show how the proposed approach comprehensively outperforms existing approaches used by the transit agency. To the best of our knowledge, this work presents one of the first examples of using open-source algorithmic approaches for paratransit optimization.
Wearable Sensor-Based Few-Shot Continual Learning on Hand Gestures for Motor-Impaired Individuals via Latent Embedding Exploitation
Authors: Riyad Bin Rafiq; Weishi Shi; Mark V. Albert
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Hand gestures can provide a natural means of human-computer interaction and enable people who cannot speak to communicate efficiently. Existing hand gesture recognition methods heavily depend on pre-defined gestures, however, motor-impaired individuals require new gestures tailored to each individual's gesture motion and style. Gesture samples collected from different persons have distribution shifts due to their health conditions, the severity of the disability, motion patterns of the arms, etc. In this paper, we introduce the Latent Embedding Exploitation (LEE) mechanism in our replay-based Few-Shot Continual Learning (FSCL) framework that significantly improves the performance of fine-tuning a model for out-of-distribution data. Our method produces a diversified latent feature space by leveraging a preserved latent embedding known as gesture prior knowledge, along with intra-gesture divergence derived from two additional embeddings. Thus, the model can capture latent statistical structure in highly variable gestures with limited samples. We conduct an experimental evaluation using the SmartWatch Gesture and the Motion Gesture datasets. The proposed method results in an average test accuracy of 57.0%, 64.6%, and 69.3% by using one, three, and five samples for six different gestures. Our method helps motor-impaired persons leverage wearable devices, and their unique styles of movement can be learned and applied in human-computer interaction and social communication. Code is available at: https://github.com/riyadRafiq/wearable-latent-embedding-exploitation.
From Pink and Blue to a Rainbow Hue! Defying Gender Bias through Gender Neutralizing Text Transformations
Authors: Gopendra Vikram Singh; Soumitra Ghosh; Neil Dcruze; Asif Ekbal
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: In an era where language biases contribute to societal inequalities, this research focuses on gender bias in textual data, with profound implications for promoting inclusivity and equity, aligning with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and upholding the principle of Leave No One Behind (LNOB). Leveraging advances in artificial intelligence, the study introduces the GEnder-NEutralizing Text Transformation (GENETT) framework, addressing gender bias in text through auto-encoders, vector quantization, and Neutrality-Infused Stylization. Furthermore, we present the first-of-its-kind corpus of GEnder Neutralized REvisions (GENRE) crafted from gender-stereotyped versions. This corpus serves a multifaceted utility, offering a resource for diverse downstream tasks in gender-bias analysis. Extensive experimentation on GENRE highlights the superiority of the proposed model over established baselines and state-of-the-art methods. Access the code and dataset at 1. https://www.iitp.ac.in/~ai-nlp-ml/resources.html#GNR, 2. https://github.com/Soumitra816/GNR. Note: Our research focuses on understanding cyber harassment conversations, especially in under-researched areas, with the exclusion of non-binary cases due to existing dataset limitations, not lack of sensitivity. We strive for inclusivity and plan to address this in future research with suitable datasets.
Self-Supervised Vision for Climate Downscaling
Authors: Karandeep Singh; Chaeyoon Jeong; Naufal Shidqi; Sungwon Park; Arjun Nellikkattil; Elke Zeller; Meeyoung Cha
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Climate change is one of the most critical challenges that our planet is facing today. Rising global temperatures are already affecting Earth's weather and climate patterns with an increased frequency of unpredictable and extreme events. Future projections for climate change research are based on computer models like Earth System Models (ESMs). Climate simulations typically run on a coarser grid due to the high computational resources required, and then undergo a lighter downscaling process to obtain data on a finer grid. This work presents a self-supervised deep learning model that does not require high resolution ground truth data for downscaling. This is realized by leveraging salient distribution patterns and the hidden dependencies between weather variables for an individual data point at runtime. We propose three climate-specific components that well represent the patterns of underlying weather variables and learn intricate inter-variable dependencies. Extensive evaluation with 2x, 3x, and 4x scaling factors demonstrates that our model obtains 8% to 47% performance gain over existing baselines while greatly reducing the overall runtime. The improved performance and no dependence on high resolution ground truth data make our method a valuable tool for future climate research.
SUKHSANDESH: An Avatar Therapeutic Question Answering Platform for Sexual Education in Rural India
Authors: Salam Michael  Singh; Shubhmoy Kumar  Garg; Amitesh  Misra; Aaditeshwar Seth; Tanmoy Chakraborty
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Sexual education aims to foster a healthy lifestyle in terms of emotional, mental and social well-being. In countries like India, where adolescents form the largest demographic group, they face significant vulnerabilities concerning sexual health. Unfortunately, sexual education is often stigmatized, creating barriers to providing essential counseling and information to this at-risk population. Consequently, issues such as early pregnancy, unsafe abortions, sexually transmitted infections, and sexual violence become prevalent. Our current proposal aims to provide a safe and trustworthy platform for sexual education to the vulnerable rural Indian population, thereby fostering the healthy and overall growth of the nation. In this regard, we strive towards designing SUKHSANDESH, a multi-staged AI-based Question Answering platform for sexual education tailored to rural India, adhering to safety guardrails and regional language support. By utilizing information retrieval techniques and large language models, SUKHSANDESH will deliver effective responses to user queries. We also propose to anonymise the dataset to mitigate safety measures and set AI guardrails against any harmful or unwanted response generation. Moreover, an innovative feature of our proposal involves integrating "avatar therapy" with SUKHSANDESH. This feature will convert AI-generated responses into real-time audio delivered by an animated avatar speaking regional Indian languages. This approach aims to foster empathy and connection, which is particularly beneficial for individuals with limited literacy skills. Partnering with Gram Vanni, an industry leader, we will deploy SUKHSANDESH to address sexual education needs in rural India.
A Novel GAN Approach to Augment Limited Tabular Data for Short-Term Substance Use Prediction
Authors: Nguyen Thach; Patrick Habecker; Bergen Johnston; Lillianna Cervantes; Anika Eisenbraun; Alex Mason; Kimberly Tyler; Bilal Khan; Hau Chan
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Substance use is a global issue that negatively impacts millions of persons who use drugs (PWUDs). In practice, identifying vulnerable PWUDs for efficient allocation of appropriate resources is challenging due to their complex use patterns (e.g., their tendency to change usage within months) and the high acquisition costs for collecting PWUD-focused substance use data. Thus, there has been a paucity of machine learning models for accurately predicting short-term substance use behaviors of PWUDs. In this paper, using longitudinal survey data of 258 PWUDs in the U.S. Great Plains collected by our team, we design a novel GAN that deals with high-dimensional low-sample-size tabular data and survey skip logic to augment existing data to improve classification models' prediction on (A) whether the PWUDs would increase usage and (B) at which ordinal frequency they would use a particular drug within the next 12 months. Our evaluation results show that, when trained on augmented data from our proposed GAN, the classification models improve their predictive performance (AUROC) by up to 13.4% in Problem (A) and 15.8% in Problem (B) for usage of marijuana, meth, amphetamines, and cocaine, which outperform state-of-the-art generative models.
Fuel-Saving Route Planning with Data-Driven and Learning-Based Approaches – A Systematic Solution for Harbor Tugs
Authors: Shengming Wang; Xiaocai Zhang; Jing Li; Xiaoyang Wei; Hoong Chuin Lau; Bing Tian Dai; Binbin Huang; Zhe Xiao; Xiuju Fu; Zheng Qin
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: In recent years, there are trends toward cleaner port environments through enforcement by imposed legislation. Transit optimisation of fuel-based port service boats like harbour tugs has emerged as a critical task to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emission. In this paper, an innovative learning-based method, comprising a Reinforcement Learning (RL) model together with a fuel consumption prediction model, was proposed to formulate fuel-saving transit routes. Firstly, an ensemble model is established by combining a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model with a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) model, predicting fuel use based on tugboat movement and environment factors. Subsequently, an innovative RL based on Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) framework is developed considering the characteristics and obstructions of waterway in Singapore as well as the environmental factors to learn the optimal transit strategy that minimizes fuel consumption. We also demonstrate the efficacy of the solution to generate routes from origin to destination terminals, exhibiting significantly reduced fuel consumption in comparison to real-world transit scenarios.
Guiding Clinical Reasoning with Large Language Models via Knowledge Seeds
Authors: Jiageng Wu; Xian Wu; Jie Yang
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Clinical reasoning refers to the cognitive process that physicians employ in evaluating and managing patients. This process typically involves suggesting necessary examinations, diagnosing patients’ diseases, and selecting appropriate therapies, etc. Accurate clinical reasoning requires extensive medical knowledge and rich clinical experience, setting a high bar for physicians. This is particularly challenging in developing countries due to the overwhelming number of patients and limited physician resources, contributing significantly to global health inequity and necessitating automated clinical reasoning approaches. Recently, the emergence of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and GPT-4 have demonstrated their potential in clinical reasoning. However, these LLMs are prone to hallucination problems, and the reasoning process of LLMs may not align with the clinical decision pathways of physicians. In this study, we introduce a novel framework, In-Context Padding (ICP), to enhance LLMs reasoning with medical knowledge. Specifically, we infer critical clinical reasoning elements (referred to as knowledge seeds) and use these as anchors to guide the generation process of LLMs. Experiments on two clinical question datasets validate that ICP significantly improves the clinical reasoning ability of LLMs.
Safeguarding Fraud Detection from Attacks: A Robust Graph Learning Approach
Authors: Jiasheng Wu; Xin Liu; Dawei Cheng; Yi Ouyang; Xian Wu; Yefeng Zheng
Venue: IJCAI 2024 (main)

Abstract: Financial fraud is one of the most significant social issues and has caused tremendous property losses. Graph neural networks (GNNs) have been applied to anti-fraud practices and achieved decent results. However, recent researches have discovered flaws in the robustness of fraud-detection models based on GNNs, enabling fraudsters to mislead them through attacks like data poisoning. In addition, most existing attack-defense models tend to study on ideal settings and lose information during truncation or filtering, which lowers their performances in complicated financial fraud cases. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel robust anti-fraud GNN model. In particular, we first design an attack algorithm tampering with both features and structures of graph data to simulate fraudsters' attacking behaviors in real-life complex fraud scenarios. Then we apply singular value decomposition to the graph and learn the decomposed matrices in a GNN model with specifically designed joint losses. This enables our model to learn the graph patterns in low-rank subspaces without losing too much detailed information and fit the graph structure to characteristics including class-homophily and sparsity to guarantee robustness. The proposed approach is experimented on real-world fraud datasets, which demonstrates its advantages in fraud detection and robustness compared with the state-of-the-art baselines.