OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Fast approximate $\ell$-center clustering in high dimensional spaces
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2025
Year: 2025

We study the design of efficient approximation algorithms for the $\ell$-center clustering and minimum-diameter $\ell$-clustering problems in high dimensional Euclidean and Hamming spaces. Our main tool is randomized dimension reduction. First, we present a general method of reducing the dependency of the running time of a hypothetical algorithm for the $\ell$-center problem in a high dimensional Euclidean space on the dimension size. Utilizing in part this method, we provide $(2+ε)$- approximation algorithms for the $\ell$-center clustering and minimum-diameter $\ell$-clustering problems in Euclidean and Hamming spaces that are substantially faster than the known $2$-approximation ones when both $\ell$ and the dimension are super-logarithmic. Next, we apply the general method to the recent fast approximation algorithms with higher approximation guarantees for the $\ell$-center clustering problem in a high dimensional Euclidean space. Finally, we provide a speed-up of the known $O(1)$-approximation method for the generalization of the $\ell$-center clustering problem to include $z$ outliers (i.e., $z$ input points can be ignored while computing the maximum distance of an input point to a center) in high dimensional Euclidean and Hamming spaces.
Idea-Gated Transformers: Enforcing Semantic Coherence via Differentiable Vocabulary Pruning
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2025
Year: 2025

Autoregressive Language Models (LLMs) trained on Next-Token Prediction (NTP) often suffer from Topic Drift where the generation wanders away from the initial prompt due to a reliance on local associations rather than global planning. While scaling model size mitigates this, the fundamental myopia of the NTP objective remains. In this work, we introduce the Idea-Gated Transformer, a novel architecture that separates semantic planning from syntactic generation. We introduce an auxiliary Idea Head trained to predict the bag-of-words distribution for a future context window, creating a latent ``Concept Vector'' that actively gates the main vocabulary during generation. We propose a differentiable gating mechanism that suppresses semantically irrelevant tokens, effectively pruning the search space in real-time. Experiments on WikiText-103 demonstrate that while the Idea-Gated model achieves comparable validation perplexity to a standard GPT-2 baseline, it exhibits significantly superior Domain Retention. Qualitative and quantitative analysis reveals that the gating mechanism successfully locks generation into specific semantic clusters (e.g., Finance, Science) and resists associative drift, offering a parameter-efficient path toward more controllable language modeling.
GrOMP: Grasped Object Manifold Projection for Multimodal Imitation Learning of Manipulation
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2025
Year: 2025

Imitation Learning (IL) holds great potential for learning repetitive manipulation tasks, such as those in industrial assembly. However, its effectiveness is often limited by insufficient trajectory precision due to compounding errors. In this paper, we introduce Grasped Object Manifold Projection (GrOMP), an interactive method that mitigates these errors by constraining a non-rigidly grasped object to a lower-dimensional manifold. GrOMP assumes a precise task in which a manipulator holds an object that may shift within the grasp in an observable manner and must be mated with a grounded part. Crucially, all GrOMP enhancements are learned from the same expert dataset used to train the base IL policy, and are adjusted with an n-arm bandit-based interactive component. We propose a theoretical basis for GrOMP's improvement upon the well-known compounding error bound in IL literature. We demonstrate the framework on four precise assembly tasks using tactile feedback, and note that the approach remains modality-agnostic. Data and videos are available at williamvdb.github.io/GrOMPsite.
Empirical assessment of the perception of graphical threat model acceptability
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2025
Year: 2025

Threat modeling (TM) is an important aspect of risk analysis and secure software engineering. Graphical threat models are a recommended tool to analyze and communicate threat information. However, the comparison of different graphical threat models, and the acceptability of these threat models for an audience with a limited technical background, is not well understood, despite these users making up a sizable portion of the cybersecurity industry. We seek to compare the acceptability of three general, graphical threat models, Attack-Defense Trees (ADTs), Attack Graphs (AGs), and CORAS, for users with a limited technical background. We conducted a laboratory study with 38 bachelor students who completed tasks with the three threat models across three different scenarios assigned using a Latin square design. Threat model submissions were qualitatively analyzed, and participants filled out a perception questionnaire based on the Method Evaluation Model (MEM). We find that both ADTs and CORAS are broadly acceptable for a wide range of scenarios, and both could be applied successfully by users with a limited technical background; further, we also find that the lack of a specific tool for AGs may have impacted the perceived usefulness of AGs. We can recommend that users with a limited technical background use ADTs or CORAS as a general graphical TM method. Further research on the acceptability of AGs to such an audience and the effect of a dedicated TM tool support is needed.
LLM-Generated Ads: From Personalization Parity to Persuasion Superiority
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2025
Year: 2025

As large language models (LLMs) become increasingly capable of generating persuasive content, understanding their effectiveness across different advertising strategies becomes critical. This paper presents a two-part investigation examining LLM-generated advertising through complementary lenses: (1) personality-based and (2) psychological persuasion principles. In our first study (n=400), we tested whether LLMs could generate personalized advertisements tailored to specific personality traits (openness and neuroticism) and how their performance compared to human experts. Results showed that LLM-generated ads achieved statistical parity with human-written ads (51.1% vs. 48.9%, p > 0.05), with no significant performance differences for matched personalities. Building on these insights, our second study (n=800) shifted focus from individual personalization to universal persuasion, testing LLM performance across four foundational psychological principles: authority, consensus, cognition, and scarcity. AI-generated ads significantly outperformed human-created content, achieving a 59.1% preference rate (vs. 40.9%, p < 0.001), with the strongest performance in authority (63.0%) and consensus (62.5%) appeals. Qualitative analysis revealed AI's advantage stems from crafting more sophisticated, aspirational messages and achieving superior visual-narrative coherence. Critically, this quality advantage proved robust: even after applying a 21.2 percentage point detection penalty when participants correctly identified AI-origin, AI ads still outperformed human ads, and 29.4% of participants chose AI content despite knowing its origin. These findings demonstrate LLMs' evolution from parity in personalization to superiority in persuasive storytelling, with significant implications for advertising practice given LLMs' near-zero marginal cost and time requirements compared to human experts.
Teacher, But Also Student: Challenges and Tech Needs of Adult Braille Learners with Sight
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2025
Year: 2025

Braille literacy is critical for blind individuals' independence and quality of life, yet literacy rates continue to decline. Though braille instructors in integrated K-12 classrooms play a central role in literacy development in blind youth, prior research on braille learning almost exclusively focuses on blind adolescent students. As a result, we still know little about how sighted adult teachers learn braille. To address this, we interviewed 14 educators, including 13 certificated Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments (TVIs) and 1 paraeducator, who learned braille as adults. We found that they: (1) lack consistent braille exposure to reinforce knowledge and skill; (2) have limited time to practice due to myriad responsibilities of adulthood; and thus, (3) seek learning tools that are engaging and efficient. Our research draws attention to the needs of a group of braille learners who have been overlooked and identifies new design opportunities to facilitate braille literacy.
Comparative algorithm performance evaluation and prediction for the maximum clique problem using instance space analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2025
Year: 2025

The maximum clique problem, a well-known graph-based combinatorial optimization problem, has been addressed through various algorithmic approaches, though systematic analyses of the problem instances remain sparse. This study employs the instance space analysis (ISA) methodology to systematically analyze the instance space of this problem and assess & predict the performance of state-of-the-art (SOTA) algorithms, including exact, heuristic, and graph neural network (GNN)-based methods. A dataset was compiled using graph instances from TWITTER, COLLAB and IMDB-BINARY benchmarks commonly used in graph machine learning research. A set of 33 generic and 2 problem-specific polynomial-time-computable graph-based features, including several spectral properties, was employed for the ISA. A composite performance measure incorporating both solution quality and algorithm runtime was utilized. The comparative analysis demonstrated that the exact algorithm Mixed Order Maximum Clique (MOMC) exhibited superior performance across approximately 74.7% of the instance space constituted by the compiled dataset. Gurobi & CliSAT accounted for superior performance in 13.8% and 11% of the instance space, respectively. The ISA-based algorithm performance prediction model run on 34 challenging test instances compiled from the BHOSLIB and DIMACS datasets yielded top-1 and top-2 best performing algorithm prediction accuracies of 88% and 97%, respectively.
HarnessAgent: Scaling Automatic Fuzzing Harness Construction with Tool-Augmented LLM Pipelines
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2025
Year: 2025

Large language model (LLM)-based techniques have achieved notable progress in generating harnesses for program fuzzing. However, applying them to arbitrary functions (especially internal functions) \textit{at scale} remains challenging due to the requirement of sophisticated contextual information, such as specification, dependencies, and usage examples. State-of-the-art methods heavily rely on static or incomplete context provisioning, causing failure of generating functional harnesses. Furthermore, LLMs tend to exploit harness validation metrics, producing plausible yet logically useless code. % Therefore, harness generation across large and diverse projects continues to face challenges in reliable compilation, robust code retrieval, and comprehensive validation. To address these challenges, we present HarnessAgent, a tool-augmented agentic framework that achieves fully automated, scalable harness construction over hundreds of OSS-Fuzz targets. HarnessAgent introduces three key innovations: 1) a rule-based strategy to identify and minimize various compilation errors; 2) a hybrid tool pool for precise and robust symbol source code retrieval; and 3) an enhanced harness validation pipeline that detects fake definitions. We evaluate HarnessAgent on 243 target functions from OSS-Fuzz projects (65 C projects and 178 C++ projects). It improves the three-shot success rate by approximately 20\% compared to state-of-the-art techniques, reaching 87\% for C and 81\% for C++. Our one-hour fuzzing results show that more than 75\% of the harnesses generated by HarnessAgent increase the target function coverage, surpassing the baselines by over 10\%. In addition, the hybrid tool-pool system of HarnessAgent achieves a response rate of over 90\% for source code retrieval, outperforming Fuzz Introspector by more than 30\%.
DM3D: Deformable Mamba via Offset-Guided Gaussian Sequencing for Point Cloud Understanding
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2025
Year: 2025

State Space Models (SSMs) demonstrate significant potential for long-sequence modeling, but their reliance on input order conflicts with the irregular nature of point clouds. Existing approaches often rely on predefined serialization strategies, which cannot adjust based on diverse geometric structures. To overcome this limitation, we propose \textbf{DM3D}, a deformable Mamba architecture for point cloud understanding. Specifically, DM3D introduces an offset-guided Gaussian sequencing mechanism that unifies local resampling and global reordering within a deformable scan. The Gaussian-based KNN Resampling (GKR) enhances structural awareness by adaptively reorganizing neighboring points, while the Gaussian-based Differentiable Reordering (GDR) enables end-to-end optimization of serialization order. Furthermore, a Tri-Path Frequency Fusion module enhances feature complementarity and reduces aliasing. Together, these components enable structure-adaptive serialization of point clouds. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets show that DM3D achieves state-of-the-art performance in classification, few-shot learning, and part segmentation, demonstrating that adaptive serialization effectively unlocks the potential of SSMs for point cloud understanding. The code will be released at https://github.com/L1277471578/DM3D.
PretrainZero: Reinforcement Active Pretraining
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2025
Year: 2025

Mimicking human behavior to actively learning from general experience and achieve artificial general intelligence has always been a human dream. Recent reinforcement learning (RL) based large-thinking models demonstrate impressive expert-level abilities, i.e., software and math, but still rely heavily on verifiable rewards in specific domains, placing a significant bottleneck to extend the performance boundary of general reasoning capabilities. In this work, we propose PretrainZero, a reinforcement active learning framework built on the pretraining corpus to extend RL from domain-specific post-training to general pretraining. PretrainZero features the following characteristics: 1) Active pretraining: inspired by the active learning ability of humans, PretrainZero learns a unified reasoning policy to actively identify reasonable and informative contents from pretraining corpus, and reason to predict these contents by RL. 2) Self-supervised learning: without any verifiable labels, pretrained reward models, or supervised fine-tuning, we directly pretrain reasoners from 3 to 30B base models on the general Wikipedia corpus using RL, significantly breaking the verification data-wall for general reasoning. 3) Verification scaling: by tackling increasingly challenging masked spans, PretrainZero substantially enhances the general reasoning abilities of pretrained base models. In reinforcement pretraining, PretrainZero improves Qwen3-4B-Base for 8.43, 5.96 and 10.60 on MMLU-Pro, SuperGPQA and math average benchmarks. In post-training, the pretrained models can also serve as reasoning foundation models for downstream RLVR tasks.
In-Situ Encryption of Single-Transistor Nonvolatile Memories without Density Loss
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2025
Year: 2025

Non-volatile memories (NVMs) offer negligible leakage power consumption, high integration density, and data retention, but their non-volatility also raises the risk of data exposure. Conventional encryption techniques such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) incur large area overheads and performance penalties, motivating lightweight XOR-based in-situ encryption schemes with low area and power requirements. This work proposes an ultra-dense single-transistor encrypted cell using ferroelectric FET (FeFET) devices, which, to our knowledge, is the first to eliminate the two-memory-devices-per-encrypted-cell requirement in XOR-based schemes, enabling encrypted memory arrays to maintain the same number of storage devices as unencrypted arrays. The key idea is an in-memory single-FeFET XOR scheme, where the ciphertext is encoded in the device threshold voltage and leverages the direction-dependent current flow of the FeFET for single-cycle decryption; eliminating complementary bit storage also removes the need for two write cycles, allowing faster encryption. We extend the approach to multi-level-cell (MLC) FeFETs to store multiple bits per transistor. We validate the proposed idea through both simulation and experimental evaluations. Our analysis on a 128x128-bit array shows 2x higher encryption/decryption throughput than prior FeFET work and 45.2x/14.12x improvement over AES, while application-level evaluations using neural-network benchmarks demonstrate average latency reductions of 50% and 95% compared to prior FeFET-based and AES-based schemes, respectively.
ATHENA: Agentic Team for Hierarchical Evolutionary Numerical Algorithms
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Bridging the gap between theoretical conceptualization and computational implementation is a major bottleneck in Scientific Computing (SciC) and Scientific Machine Learning (SciML). We introduce ATHENA (Agentic Team for Hierarchical Evolutionary Numerical Algorithms), an agentic framework designed as an Autonomous Lab to manage the end-to-end computational research lifecycle. Its core is the HENA loop, a knowledge-driven diagnostic process framed as a Contextual Bandit problem. Acting as an online learner, the system analyzes prior trials to select structural `actions' ($A_n$) from combinatorial spaces guided by expert blueprints (e.g., Universal Approximation, Physics-Informed constraints). These actions are translated into executable code ($S_n$) to generate scientific rewards ($R_n$). ATHENA transcends standard automation: in SciC, it autonomously identifies mathematical symmetries for exact analytical solutions or derives stable numerical solvers where foundation models fail. In SciML, it performs deep diagnosis to tackle ill-posed formulations and combines hybrid symbolic-numeric workflows (e.g., coupling PINNs with FEM) to resolve multiphysics problems. The framework achieves super-human performance, reaching validation errors of $10^{-14}$. Furthermore, collaborative ``human-in-the-loop" intervention allows the system to bridge stability gaps, improving results by an order of magnitude. This paradigm shift focuses from implementation mechanics to methodological innovation, accelerating scientific discovery.
SocraticAI: Transforming LLMs into Guided CS Tutors Through Scaffolded Interaction
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2025
Year: 2025

We present SocraticAI, a scaffolded AI tutoring system that integrates large language models (LLMs) into undergraduate Computer Science education through structured constraints rather than prohibition. The system enforces well-formulated questions, reflective engagement, and daily usage limits while providing Socratic dialogue scaffolds. Unlike traditional AI bans, our approach cultivates responsible and strategic AI interaction skills through technical guardrails, including authentication, query validation, structured feedback, and RAG-based course grounding. Initial deployment demonstrates that students progress from vague help-seeking to sophisticated problem decomposition within 2-3 weeks, with over 75% producing substantive reflections and displaying emergent patterns of deliberate, strategic AI use.
Ancient Algorithms for a Modern Curriculum
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2025
Year: 2025

Despite ongoing calls for inclusive and culturally responsive pedagogy in computing education, the teaching of algorithms remains largely decontextualized. Foundational computer science courses often present algorithmic thinking as purely formal and ahistorical, emphasizing efficiency, correctness, and abstraction. When history is mentioned, it usually centers on the modern development of digital computers, highlighting figures such as Turing, von Neumann, and Babbage. This narrow view misrepresents the origins of algorithmic reasoning and perpetuates a Eurocentric worldview that undermines equity and representation in STEM. In contrast, algorithmic thinking predates electronic computers by millennia and has deep roots in ancient civilizations including India, China, Babylon, and Egypt. Our work responds to this gap by embedding algorithm instruction in broader historical and cultural contexts, with particular attention to classical Indian contributions.
CookAnything: A Framework for Flexible and Consistent Multi-Step Recipe Image Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2025
Year: 2025

Cooking is a sequential and visually grounded activity, where each step such as chopping, mixing, or frying carries both procedural logic and visual semantics. While recent diffusion models have shown strong capabilities in text-to-image generation, they struggle to handle structured multi-step scenarios like recipe illustration. Additionally, current recipe illustration methods are unable to adjust to the natural variability in recipe length, generating a fixed number of images regardless of the actual instructions structure. To address these limitations, we present CookAnything, a flexible and consistent diffusion-based framework that generates coherent, semantically distinct image sequences from textual cooking instructions of arbitrary length. The framework introduces three key components: (1) Step-wise Regional Control (SRC), which aligns textual steps with corresponding image regions within a single denoising process; (2) Flexible RoPE, a step-aware positional encoding mechanism that enhances both temporal coherence and spatial diversity; and (3) Cross-Step Consistency Control (CSCC), which maintains fine-grained ingredient consistency across steps. Experimental results on recipe illustration benchmarks show that CookAnything performs better than existing methods in training-based and training-free settings. The proposed framework supports scalable, high-quality visual synthesis of complex multi-step instructions and holds significant potential for broad applications in instructional media, and procedural content creation.
PARC: An Autonomous Self-Reflective Coding Agent for Robust Execution of Long-Horizon Tasks
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2025
Year: 2025

We introduce PARC, a coding agent for the autonomous and robust execution of long-horizon computational tasks. PARC is built on a hierarchical multi-agent architecture incorporating task planning, execution, and a mechanism that evaluates its own actions and their outcomes from an independent context and provides feedback, namely self-assessment and self-feedback. This design enables PARC to detect and correct high-level strategic errors and sustain progress without human intervention. We evaluate PARC across computational science and data science tasks. In materials science, it autonomously reproduces key results from studies on lithium-ion conduction and alloy segregation. In particular, it coordinates dozens of parallel simulation tasks, each requiring roughly 43 hours of computation, managing orchestration, monitoring, and error correction end-to-end. In Kaggle-based experiments, starting from minimal natural-language instructions, PARC conducts data analysis and implements search strategies, producing solutions competitive with human-engineered baselines. These results highlight the potential of integrating a hierarchical multi-agent system with self-assessment and self-feedback to enable AI systems capable of independent, large-scale scientific and analytical work.