OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
UniPlane: Unified Plane Detection and Reconstruction from Posed Monocular Videos
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

We present UniPlane, a novel method that unifies plane detection and reconstruction from posed monocular videos. Unlike existing methods that detect planes from local observations and associate them across the video for the final reconstruction, UniPlane unifies both the detection and the reconstruction tasks in a single network, which allows us to directly optimize final reconstruction quality and fully leverage temporal information. Specifically, we build a Transformers-based deep neural network that jointly constructs a 3D feature volume for the environment and estimates a set of per-plane embeddings as queries. UniPlane directly reconstructs the 3D planes by taking dot products between voxel embeddings and the plane embeddings followed by binary thresholding. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that UniPlane outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both plane detection and reconstruction tasks, achieving +4.6 in F-score in geometry as well as consistent improvements in other geometry and segmentation metrics.
Decoding Analog Subspace Codes: Algorithms for Character-Polynomial Codes
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2024
Year: 2024

We propose efficient minimum-distance decoding and list-decoding algorithms for a certain class of analog subspace codes, referred to as character-polynomial (CP) codes, recently introduced by Soleymani and the second author. In particular, a CP code without its character can be viewed as a subcode of a Reed-Solomon (RS) code, where a certain subset of the coefficients of the message polynomial is set to zeros. We then demonstrate how classical decoding methods, including list decoders, for RS codes can be leveraged for decoding CP codes. For instance, it is shown that, in almost all cases, the list decoder behaves as a unique decoder. We also present a probabilistic analysis of the improvements in list decoding of CP codes when leveraging their certain structure as subcodes of RS codes.
Question-Analysis Prompting Improves LLM Performance in Reasoning Tasks
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Although LLMs have the potential to transform many fields, they still underperform humans in reasoning tasks. Existing methods induce the model to produce step-by-step calculations, but this research explores the question: Does making the LLM analyze the question improve its performance? We propose a novel prompting strategy called Question Analysis Prompting (QAP), in which the model is prompted to explain the question in $n$ words before solving. The value of $n$ influences the length of response generated by the model. QAP is evaluated on GPT 3.5 Turbo and GPT 4 Turbo on arithmetic datasets GSM8K, AQuA, and SAT and commonsense dataset StrategyQA. QAP is compared with other state-of-the-art prompts including Chain-of-Thought (CoT), Plan and Solve Prompting (PS+) and Take A Deep Breath (TADB). QAP outperforms all state-of-the-art prompts on AQuA and SAT datasets on both GPT3.5 and GPT4. QAP consistently ranks among the top-2 prompts on 75\% of the tests. A key factor of QAP performance can be attributed to response length, where detailed responses are beneficial when answering harder questions, but can negatively affect easy questions.
DSLR: Document Refinement with Sentence-Level Re-ranking and Reconstruction to Enhance Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly improved their performance across various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. However, LLMs still struggle with generating non-factual responses due to limitations in their parametric memory. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems address this issue by incorporating external knowledge with a retrieval module. Despite their successes, however, current RAG systems face challenges with retrieval failures and the limited ability of LLMs to filter out irrelevant information. Therefore, in this work, we propose DSLR (Document Refinement with Sentence-Level Re-ranking and Reconstruction), an unsupervised framework that decomposes retrieved documents into sentences, filters out irrelevant sentences, and reconstructs them again into coherent passages. We experimentally validate DSLR on multiple open-domain QA datasets and the results demonstrate that DSLR significantly enhances the RAG performance over conventional fixed-size passage. Furthermore, our DSLR enhances performance in specific, yet realistic scenarios without the need for additional training, providing an effective and efficient solution for refining retrieved documents in RAG systems.
Reviewers of Educational Immersive and Extended Reality (XR) experiences: Who is creating these reviews and why?
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2024
Year: 2024

This paper presents a scoping review of literature to examine who is reviewing educational immersive or extended reality - eduXR experiences and why. EduXR experiences in augmented, virtual or mixed reality take many forms, from supporting manual training, engaging learners in conservation, to provide opportunities for social connection. For users of eduXR, reviews of an experience can provide information that helps them determine whether it will meet their learning needs or not. The source of the review, that is, who they are and why they have conducted the review, is critical in helping the user judge the reviews quality and relevance. At present, there is no settled review system in place for eduXR, though relevant frameworks exist for serious games review with relevance and overlap for some, but not all, eduXR experiences. While some authors have engaged in preparing a detailed review structure for eduXR, there remains a need for a clear and simple way for users of eduXR to know details about reviewers, e.g., who and why, to help make it easier for users to identify relevant reviews and gain useful insight about eduXR experiences. To help address this issue, we conducted a scoping review asking the question; Who is creating eduXR reviews, and why? We identified 16 papers that present an academic evaluation on the review process of eduXR reviews. The 16 papers were analysed, coding for who themes and why themes over two separate cycles, using thematic analysis. An analysis looked to examine what we know regarding who is providing the reviews, and why, to help us to understand what enables, inhibits and what is yet unknown about how the eduXR community goes about making informed choices regarding the eduXR experiences they engage with.
Deep learning architectures for data-driven damage detection in nonlinear dynamic systems
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The primary goal of structural health monitoring is to detect damage at its onset before it reaches a critical level. The in-depth investigation in the present work addresses deep learning applied to data-driven damage detection in nonlinear dynamic systems. In particular, autoencoders (AEs) and generative adversarial networks (GANs) are implemented leveraging on 1D convolutional neural networks. The onset of damage is detected in the investigated nonlinear dynamic systems by exciting random vibrations of varying intensity, without prior knowledge of the system or the excitation and in unsupervised manner. The comprehensive numerical study is conducted on dynamic systems exhibiting different types of nonlinear behavior. An experimental application related to a magneto-elastic nonlinear system is also presented to corroborate the conclusions.
HYBRINFOX at CheckThat! 2024 -- Task 2: Enriching BERT Models with the Expert System VAGO for Subjectivity Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

This paper presents the HYBRINFOX method used to solve Task 2 of Subjectivity detection of the CLEF 2024 CheckThat! competition. The specificity of the method is to use a hybrid system, combining a RoBERTa model, fine-tuned for subjectivity detection, a frozen sentence-BERT (sBERT) model to capture semantics, and several scores calculated by the English version of the expert system VAGO, developed independently of this task to measure vagueness and subjectivity in texts based on the lexicon. In English, the HYBRINFOX method ranked 1st with a macro F1 score of 0.7442 on the evaluation data. For the other languages, the method used a translation step into English, producing more mixed results (ranking 1st in Multilingual and 2nd in Italian over the baseline, but under the baseline in Bulgarian, German, and Arabic). We explain the principles of our hybrid approach, and outline ways in which the method could be improved for other languages besides English.
SpikeGS: Reconstruct 3D scene via fast-moving bio-inspired sensors
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) demonstrates unparalleled superior performance in 3D scene reconstruction. However, 3DGS heavily relies on the sharp images. Fulfilling this requirement can be challenging in real-world scenarios especially when the camera moves fast, which severely limits the application of 3DGS. To address these challenges, we proposed Spike Gausian Splatting (SpikeGS), the first framework that integrates the spike streams into 3DGS pipeline to reconstruct 3D scenes via a fast-moving bio-inspired camera. With accumulation rasterization, interval supervision, and a specially designed pipeline, SpikeGS extracts detailed geometry and texture from high temporal resolution but texture lacking spike stream, reconstructs 3D scenes captured in 1 second. Extensive experiments on multiple synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of SpikeGS compared with existing spike-based and deblur 3D scene reconstruction methods. Codes and data will be released soon.
Cognitive Modeling with Scaffolded LLMs: A Case Study of Referential Expression Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

To what extent can LLMs be used as part of a cognitive model of language generation? In this paper, we approach this question by exploring a neuro-symbolic implementation of an algorithmic cognitive model of referential expression generation by Dale & Reiter (1995). The symbolic task analysis implements the generation as an iterative procedure that scaffolds symbolic and gpt-3.5-turbo-based modules. We compare this implementation to an ablated model and a one-shot LLM-only baseline on the A3DS dataset (Tsvilodub & Franke, 2023). We find that our hybrid approach is cognitively plausible and performs well in complex contexts, while allowing for more open-ended modeling of language generation in a larger domain.
Algorithmic Results for Weak Roman Domination Problem in Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2024
Year: 2024

Consider a graph $G = (V, E)$ and a function $f: V \rightarrow \{0, 1, 2\}$. A vertex $u$ with $f(u)=0$ is defined as \emph{undefended} by $f$ if it lacks adjacency to any vertex with a positive $f$-value. The function $f$ is said to be a \emph{Weak Roman Dominating function} (WRD function) if, for every vertex $u$ with $f(u) = 0$, there exists a neighbour $v$ of $u$ with $f(v) > 0$ and a new function $f': V \rightarrow \{0, 1, 2\}$ defined in the following way: $f'(u) = 1$, $f'(v) = f(v) - 1$, and $f'(w) = f(w)$, for all vertices $w$ in $V\setminus\{u,v\}$; so that no vertices are undefended by $f'$. The total weight of $f$ is equal to $\sum_{v\in V} f(v)$, and is denoted as $w(f)$. The \emph{Weak Roman Domination Number} denoted by $γ_r(G)$, represents $min\{w(f)~\vert~f$ is a WRD function of $G\}$. For a given graph $G$, the problem of finding a WRD function of weight $γ_r(G)$ is defined as the \emph{Minimum Weak Roman domination problem}. The problem is already known to be NP-hard for bipartite and chordal graphs. In this paper, we further study the algorithmic complexity of the problem. We prove the NP-hardness of the problem for star convex bipartite graphs and comb convex bipartite graphs, which are subclasses of bipartite graphs. In addition, we show that for the bounded degree star convex bipartite graphs, the problem is efficiently solvable. We also prove the NP-hardness of the problem for split graphs, a subclass of chordal graphs. On the positive side, we give polynomial-time algorithms to solve the problem for $P_4$-sparse graphs. Further, we have presented some approximation results.
ConText at WASSA 2024 Empathy and Personality Shared Task: History-Dependent Embedding Utterance Representations for Empathy and Emotion Prediction in Conversations
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Empathy and emotion prediction are key components in the development of effective and empathetic agents, amongst several other applications. The WASSA shared task on empathy and emotion prediction in interactions presents an opportunity to benchmark approaches to these tasks. Appropriately selecting and representing the historical context is crucial in the modelling of empathy and emotion in conversations. In our submissions, we model empathy, emotion polarity and emotion intensity of each utterance in a conversation by feeding the utterance to be classified together with its conversational context, i.e., a certain number of previous conversational turns, as input to an encoder Pre-trained Language Model, to which we append a regression head for prediction. We also model perceived counterparty empathy of each interlocutor by feeding all utterances from the conversation and a token identifying the interlocutor for which we are predicting the empathy. Our system officially ranked $1^{st}$ at the CONV-turn track and $2^{nd}$ at the CONV-dialog track.
Treatment of near-incompressibility and volumetric locking in higher order material point methods
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2024
Year: 2024

We propose a novel projection method to treat near-incompressibility and volumetric locking in small- and large-deformation elasticity and plasticity within the context of higher order material point methods. The material point method is well known to exhibit volumetric locking due to the presence of large numbers of material points per element that are used to decrease the quadrature error. Although there has been considerable research on the treatment of near-incompressibility in the traditional material point method, the issue has not been studied in depth for higher order material point methods. Using the Bbar and Fbar methods as our point of departure we develop an appropriate projection technique for material point methods that use higher order shape functions for the background discretization. The approach is based on the projection of the dilatational part of the appropriate strain rate measure onto a lower dimensional approximation space, according to the traditional Bbar and Fbar techniques, but tailored to the material point method. The presented numerical examples exhibit reduced stress oscillations and are free of volumetric locking and hourglassing phenomena.
DocXplain: A Novel Model-Agnostic Explainability Method for Document Image Classification
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Deep learning (DL) has revolutionized the field of document image analysis, showcasing superhuman performance across a diverse set of tasks. However, the inherent black-box nature of deep learning models still presents a significant challenge to their safe and robust deployment in industry. Regrettably, while a plethora of research has been dedicated in recent years to the development of DL-powered document analysis systems, research addressing their transparency aspects has been relatively scarce. In this paper, we aim to bridge this research gap by introducing DocXplain, a novel model-agnostic explainability method specifically designed for generating high interpretability feature attribution maps for the task of document image classification. In particular, our approach involves independently segmenting the foreground and background features of the documents into different document elements and then ablating these elements to assign feature importance. We extensively evaluate our proposed approach in the context of document image classification, utilizing 4 different evaluation metrics, 2 widely recognized document benchmark datasets, and 10 state-of-the-art document image classification models. By conducting a thorough quantitative and qualitative analysis against 9 existing state-of-the-art attribution methods, we demonstrate the superiority of our approach in terms of both faithfulness and interpretability. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this work presents the first model-agnostic attribution-based explainability method specifically tailored for document images. We anticipate that our work will significantly contribute to advancing research on transparency, fairness, and robustness of document image classification models.
Reliability Criteria for News Websites
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

Misinformation poses a threat to democracy and to people's health. Reliability criteria for news websites can help people identify misinformation. But despite their importance, there has been no empirically substantiated list of criteria for distinguishing reliable from unreliable news websites. We identify reliability criteria, describe how they are applied in practice, and compare them to prior work. Based on our analysis, we distinguish between manipulable and less manipulable criteria and compare politically diverse laypeople as end users and journalists as expert users. We discuss 11 widely recognized criteria, including the following 6 criteria that are difficult to manipulate: content, political alignment, authors, professional standards, what sources are used, and a website's reputation. Finally, we describe how technology may be able to support people in applying these criteria in practice to assess the reliability of websites.
How to Evaluate Games in Education: A Literature Review
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

Adding game elements to higher education is an increasingly common practice. As a result, many recent empirical studies focus on studying the effectiveness of gamified or game-based educational experiences. The findings of these studies are very diverse, showing both positive and negative effects, and thus calling for comparative meta-studies. In this paper we review and analyze different studies, aiming to summarise and evaluate controlled experiments conducted within different scientific disciplines. We focus on the clarity of non-experimental conditions' descriptions and show that in most cases a. educational methods used in control groups' activities are poorly described, b. educational materials used in control groups' activities are often unclear, and c. the starting conditions are unclear. We also noticed that studies in the fields of computer science and engineering, in general, report results more clearly than in other fields. Based on the above finding, we conclude with a few recommendations for the execution of future empirical studies of games in education for the sake of allowing a more structured comparison.
Breaking-Good: Explaining Breaking Dependency Updates with Build Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Dependency updates often cause compilation errors when new dependency versions introduce changes that are incompatible with existing client code. Fixing breaking dependency updates is notoriously hard, as their root cause can be hidden deep in the dependency tree. We present Breaking-Good, a tool that automatically generates explanations for breaking updates. Breaking-Good provides a detailed categorization of compilation errors, identifying several factors related to changes in direct and indirect dependencies, incompatibilities between Java versions, and client-specific configuration. With a blended analysis of log and dependency trees, Breaking-Good generates detailed explanations for each breaking update. These explanations help developers understand the causes of the breaking update, and suggest possible actions to fix the breakage. We evaluate Breaking-Good on 243 real-world breaking dependency updates. Our results indicate that Breaking-Good accurately identifies root causes and generates automatic explanations for 70% of these breaking updates. Our user study demonstrates that the generated explanations help developers. Breaking-Good is the first technique that automatically identifies causes of a breaking dependency update and explains the breakage accordingly.
Scoping Review of Active Learning Strategies and their Evaluation Environments for Entity Recognition Tasks
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

We conducted a scoping review for active learning in the domain of natural language processing (NLP), which we summarize in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR guidelines as follows: Objective: Identify active learning strategies that were proposed for entity recognition and their evaluation environments (datasets, metrics, hardware, execution time). Design: We used Scopus and ACM as our search engines. We compared the results with two literature surveys to assess the search quality. We included peer-reviewed English publications introducing or comparing active learning strategies for entity recognition. Results: We analyzed 62 relevant papers and identified 106 active learning strategies. We grouped them into three categories: exploitation-based (60x), exploration-based (14x), and hybrid strategies (32x). We found that all studies used the F1-score as an evaluation metric. Information about hardware (6x) and execution time (13x) was only occasionally included. The 62 papers used 57 different datasets to evaluate their respective strategies. Most datasets contained newspaper articles or biomedical/medical data. Our analysis revealed that 26 out of 57 datasets are publicly accessible. Conclusion: Numerous active learning strategies have been identified, along with significant open questions that still need to be addressed. Researchers and practitioners face difficulties when making data-driven decisions about which active learning strategy to adopt. Conducting comprehensive empirical comparisons using the evaluation environment proposed in this study could help establish best practices in the domain.
POLAFFINI: Efficient feature-based polyaffine initialization for improved non-linear image registration
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

This paper presents an efficient feature-based approach to initialize non-linear image registration. Today, nonlinear image registration is dominated by methods relying on intensity-based similarity measures. A good estimate of the initial transformation is essential, both for traditional iterative algorithms and for recent one-shot deep learning (DL)-based alternatives. The established approach to estimate this starting point is to perform affine registration, but this may be insufficient due to its parsimonious, global, and non-bending nature. We propose an improved initialization method that takes advantage of recent advances in DL-based segmentation techniques able to instantly estimate fine-grained regional delineations with state-of-the-art accuracies. Those segmentations are used to produce local, anatomically grounded, feature-based affine matchings using iteration-free closed-form expressions. Estimated local affine transformations are then fused, with the log-Euclidean polyaffine framework, into an overall dense diffeomorphic transformation. We show that, compared to its affine counterpart, the proposed initialization leads to significantly better alignment for both traditional and DL-based non-linear registration algorithms. The proposed approach is also more robust and significantly faster than commonly used affine registration algorithms such as FSL FLIRT.