pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
On the Role of Pre-trained Embeddings in Binary Code Analysis
Authors: Alwin Maier, Felix Weissberg, Konrad Rieck
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00

Deep learning has enabled remarkable progress in binary code analysis. In particular, pre-trained embeddings of assembly code have become a gold standard for solving analysis tasks, such as measuring code similarity or recognizing functions. These embeddings are capable of learning a vector representation from unlabeled code. In contrast to natural language processing, however, label information is not scarce for many tasks in binary code analysis. For example, labeled training data for function boundaries, optimization levels, and argument types can be easily derived from debug information provided by a compiler. Consequently, the main motivation of embeddings does not transfer directly to binary code analysis. In this paper, we explore the role of pre-trained embeddings from a critical perspective. To this end, we systematically evaluate recent embeddings for assembly code on five downstream tasks using a corpus of 1.2 million functions from the Debian distribution. We observe that several embeddings perform similarly when sufficient labeled data is available, and that differences reported in prior work are hardly noticeable. Surprisingly, we find that end-to-end learning without pre-training performs best on average, which calls into question the need for specialized embeddings. By varying the amount of labeled data, we eventually derive guidelines for when embeddings offer advantages and when end-to-end learning is preferable for binary code analysis.
A Deep Learning approach for parametrized and time dependent Partial Differential Equations using Dimensionality Reduction and Neural ODEs
Authors: Alessandro Longhi, Danny Lathouwers, Zoltán Perkó
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Dimensionality Reduction, Uncertainty Quantification

Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) are central to science and engineering. Since solving them is computationally expensive, a lot of effort has been put into approximating their solution operator via both traditional and recently increasingly Deep Learning (DL) techniques. A conclusive methodology capable of accounting both for (continuous) time and parameter dependency in such DL models however is still lacking. In this paper, we propose an autoregressive and data-driven method using the analogy with classical numerical solvers for time-dependent, parametric and (typically) nonlinear PDEs. We present how Dimensionality Reduction (DR) can be coupled with Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (NODEs) in order to learn the solution operator of arbitrary PDEs. The idea of our work is that it is possible to map the high-fidelity (i.e., high-dimensional) PDE solution space into a reduced (low-dimensional) space, which subsequently exhibits dynamics governed by a (latent) Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE). Solving this (easier) ODE in the reduced space allows avoiding solving the PDE in the high-dimensional solution space, thus decreasing the computational burden for repeated calculations for e.g., uncertainty quantification or design optimization purposes. The main outcome of this work is the importance of exploiting DR as opposed to the recent trend of building large and complex architectures: we show that by leveraging DR we can deliver not only more accurate predictions, but also a considerably lighter and faster DL model compared to existing methodologies.
Self-Evaluation for Job-Shop Scheduling
Authors: Imanol Echeverria, Maialen Murua, Roberto Santana
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Combinatorial Optimization, Decision Making, Graph Neural Network, Job Shop Scheduling, Scheduling, Sequential Decision Making

Combinatorial optimization problems, such as scheduling and route planning, are crucial in various industries but are computationally intractable due to their NP-hard nature. Neural Combinatorial Optimization methods leverage machine learning to address these challenges but often depend on sequential decision-making, which is prone to error accumulation as small mistakes propagate throughout the process. Inspired by self-evaluation techniques in Large Language Models, we propose a novel framework that generates and evaluates subsets of assignments, moving beyond traditional stepwise approaches. Applied to the Job-Shop Scheduling Problem, our method integrates a heterogeneous graph neural network with a Transformer to build a policy model and a self-evaluation function. Experimental validation on challenging, well-known benchmarks demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach, surpassing state-of-the-art methods.
Beyond Models! Explainable Data Valuation and Metric Adaption for Recommendation
Authors: Renqi Jia, Xiaokun Zhang, Bowei He, Qiannan Zhu, Weitao Xu, Jiehao Chen, Chen Ma
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Data Valuation, Fairness, Model Optimization, Recommendation Systems

User behavior records serve as the foundation for recommender systems. While the behavior data exhibits ease of acquisition, it often suffers from varying quality. Current methods employ data valuation to discern high-quality data from low-quality data. However, they tend to employ black-box design, lacking transparency and interpretability. Besides, they are typically tailored to specific evaluation metrics, leading to limited generality across various tasks. To overcome these issues, we propose an explainable and versatile framework DVR which can enhance the efficiency of data utilization tailored to any requirements of the model architectures and evaluation metrics. For explainable data valuation, a data valuator is presented to evaluate the data quality via calculating its Shapley value from the game-theoretic perspective, ensuring robust mathematical properties and reliability. In order to accommodate various evaluation metrics, including differentiable and non-differentiable ones, a metric adapter is devised based on reinforcement learning, where a metric is treated as the reinforcement reward that guides model optimization. Extensive experiments conducted on various benchmarks verify that our framework can improve the performance of current recommendation algorithms on various metrics including ranking accuracy, diversity, and fairness. Specifically, our framework achieves up to 34.7\% improvements over existing methods in terms of representative NDCG metric. The code is available at https://github.com/renqii/DVR.
EEG Artifact Detection and Correction with Deep Autoencoders
Authors: David Aquilué-Llorens, Aureli Soria-Frisch
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Artifact Detection, EEG, EEG Artifact Removal

EEG signals convey important information about brain activity both in healthy and pathological conditions. However, they are inherently noisy, which poses significant challenges for accurate analysis and interpretation. Traditional EEG artifact removal methods, while effective, often require extensive expert intervention. This study presents LSTEEG, a novel LSTM-based autoencoder designed for the detection and correction of artifacts in EEG signals. Leveraging deep learning, particularly LSTM layers, LSTEEG captures non-linear dependencies in sequential EEG data. LSTEEG demonstrates superior performance in both artifact detection and correction tasks compared to other state-of-the-art convolutional autoencoders. Our methodology enhances the interpretability and utility of the autoencoder's latent space, enabling data-driven automated artefact removal in EEG its application in downstream tasks. This research advances the field of efficient and accurate multi-channel EEG preprocessing, and promotes the implementation and usage of automated EEG analysis pipelines for brain health applications.
Advancing machine fault diagnosis: A detailed examination of convolutional neural networks
Authors: Govind Vashishtha, Sumika Chauhan, Mert Sehri, Justyna Hebda-Sobkowicz, Radoslaw Zimroz, Patrick Dumond, Rajesh Kumar
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Data Augmentation, Fault Detection, Fault Diagnosis, Transfer Learning

The growing complexity of machinery and the increasing demand for operational efficiency and safety have driven the development of advanced fault diagnosis techniques. Among these, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have emerged as a powerful tool, offering robust and accurate fault detection and classification capabilities. This comprehensive review delves into the application of CNNs in machine fault diagnosis, covering its theoretical foundation, architectural variations, and practical implementations. The strengths and limitations of CNNs are analyzed in this domain, discussing their effectiveness in handling various fault types, data complexities, and operational environments. Furthermore, we explore the evolving landscape of CNN-based fault diagnosis, examining recent advancements in data augmentation, transfer learning, and hybrid architectures. Finally, we highlight future research directions and potential challenges to further enhance the application of CNNs for reliable and proactive machine fault diagnosis.
A Comparative Study of Machine Learning Algorithms for Stock Price Prediction Using Insider Trading Data
Authors: Amitabh Chakravorty, Nelly Elsayed
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Feature Importance, Stock Price Prediction

The research paper empirically investigates several machine learning algorithms to forecast stock prices depending on insider trading information. Insider trading offers special insights into market sentiment, pointing to upcoming changes in stock prices. This study examines the effectiveness of algorithms like decision trees, random forests, support vector machines (SVM) with different kernels, and K-Means Clustering using a dataset of Tesla stock transactions. Examining past data from April 2020 to March 2023, this study focuses on how well these algorithms identify trends and forecast stock price fluctuations. The paper uses Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE) and feature importance analysis to optimize the feature set and, hence, increase prediction accuracy. While it requires substantially greater processing time than other models, SVM with the Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel displays the best accuracy. This paper highlights the trade-offs between accuracy and efficiency in machine learning models and proposes the possibility of pooling multiple data sources to raise prediction performance. The results of this paper aim to help financial analysts and investors in choosing strong algorithms to optimize investment strategies.
Spectral Journey: How Transformers Predict the Shortest Path
Authors: Andrew Cohen, Andrey Gromov, Kaiyu Yang, Yuandong Tian
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Decoder, Graph Embedding

Decoder-only transformers lead to a step-change in capability of large language models. However, opinions are mixed as to whether they are really planning or reasoning. A path to making progress in this direction is to study the model's behavior in a setting with carefully controlled data. Then interpret the learned representations and reverse-engineer the computation performed internally. We study decoder-only transformer language models trained from scratch to predict shortest paths on simple, connected and undirected graphs. In this setting, the representations and the dynamics learned by the model are interpretable. We present three major results: (1) Two-layer decoder-only language models can learn to predict shortest paths on simple, connected graphs containing up to 10 nodes. (2) Models learn a graph embedding that is correlated with the spectral decomposition of the line graph. (3) Following the insights, we discover a novel approximate path-finding algorithm Spectral Line Navigator (SLN) that finds shortest path by greedily selecting nodes in the space of spectral embedding of the line graph.
Low-Resolution Neural Networks
Authors: Eduardo Lobo Lustosa Cabral, Larissa Driemeier
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency, Data Augmentation

The expanding scale of large neural network models introduces significant challenges, driving efforts to reduce memory usage and enhance computational efficiency. Such measures are crucial to ensure the practical implementation and effective application of these sophisticated models across a wide array of use cases. This study examines the impact of parameter bit precision on model performance compared to standard 32-bit models, with a focus on multiclass object classification in images. The models analyzed include those with fully connected layers, convolutional layers, and transformer blocks, with model weight resolution ranging from 1 bit to 4.08 bits. The findings indicate that models with lower parameter bit precision achieve results comparable to 32-bit models, showing promise for use in memory-constrained devices. While low-resolution models with a small number of parameters require more training epochs to achieve accuracy comparable to 32-bit models, those with a large number of parameters achieve similar performance within the same number of epochs. Additionally, data augmentation can destabilize training in low-resolution models, but including zero as a potential value in the weight parameters helps maintain stability and prevents performance degradation. Overall, 2.32-bit weights offer the optimal balance of memory reduction, performance, and efficiency. However, further research should explore other dataset types and more complex and larger models. These findings suggest a potential new era for optimized neural network models with reduced memory requirements and improved computational efficiency, though advancements in dedicated hardware are necessary to fully realize this potential.
Deep EEG Super-Resolution: Upsampling EEG Spatial Resolution with Generative Adversarial Networks
Authors: Isaac Corley, Yufei Huang
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: EEG, Super-Resolution

Electroencephalography (EEG) activity contains a wealth of information about what is happening within the human brain. Recording more of this data has the potential to unlock endless future applications. However, the cost of EEG hardware is increasingly expensive based upon the number of EEG channels being recorded simultaneously. We combat this problem in this paper by proposing a novel deep EEG super-resolution (SR) approach based on Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). This approach can produce high spatial resolution EEG data from low resolution samples, by generating channel-wise upsampled data to effectively interpolate numerous missing channels, thus reducing the need for expensive EEG equipment. We tested the performance using an EEG dataset from a mental imagery task. Our proposed GAN model provided 10^4 fold and 10^2 fold reduction in mean-squared error (MSE) and mean-absolute error (MAE), respectively, over the baseline bicubic interpolation method. We further validate our method by training a classifier on the original classification task, which displayed minimal loss in accuracy while using the super-resolved data. The proposed SR EEG by GAN is a promising approach to improve the spatial resolution of low density EEG headsets.
A Survey on Data-Centric AI: Tabular Learning from Reinforcement Learning and Generative AI Perspective
Authors: Wangyang Ying, Cong Wei, Nanxu Gong, Xinyuan Wang, Haoyue Bai, Arun Vignesh Malarkkan, Sixun Dong, Dongjie Wang, Denghui Zhang, Yanjie Fu
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Feature Engineering, feature selection, Marketing, Reinforcement Learning (RL), Survey

Tabular data is one of the most widely used data formats across various domains such as bioinformatics, healthcare, and marketing. As artificial intelligence moves towards a data-centric perspective, improving data quality is essential for enhancing model performance in tabular data-driven applications. This survey focuses on data-driven tabular data optimization, specifically exploring reinforcement learning (RL) and generative approaches for feature selection and feature generation as fundamental techniques for refining data spaces. Feature selection aims to identify and retain the most informative attributes, while feature generation constructs new features to better capture complex data patterns. We systematically review existing generative methods for tabular data engineering, analyzing their latest advancements, real-world applications, and respective strengths and limitations. This survey emphasizes how RL-based and generative techniques contribute to the automation and intelligence of feature engineering. Finally, we summarize the existing challenges and discuss future research directions, aiming to provide insights that drive continued innovation in this field.
PLayer-FL: A Principled Approach to Personalized Layer-wise Cross-Silo Federated Learning
Authors: Ahmed Elhussein, Gamze Gürsoy
Date: 2025-02-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Federated Learning, Sensitivity

Non-identically distributed data is a major challenge in Federated Learning (FL). Personalized FL tackles this by balancing local model adaptation with global model consistency. One variant, partial FL, leverages the observation that early layers learn more transferable features by federating only early layers. However, current partial FL approaches use predetermined, architecture-specific rules to select layers, limiting their applicability. We introduce Principled Layer-wise-FL (PLayer-FL), which uses a novel federation sensitivity metric to identify layers that benefit from federation. This metric, inspired by model pruning, quantifies each layer's contribution to cross-client generalization after the first training epoch, identifying a transition point in the network where the benefits of federation diminish. We first demonstrate that our federation sensitivity metric shows strong correlation with established generalization measures across diverse architectures. Next, we show that PLayer-FL outperforms existing FL algorithms on a range of tasks, also achieving more uniform performance improvements across clients.
A Systematic Evaluation of Generative Models on Tabular Transportation Data
Authors: Chengen Wang, Alvaro Cardenas, Gurcan Comert, Murat Kantarcioglu
Date: 2025-02-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Synthetic Data Generation

The sharing of large-scale transportation data is beneficial for transportation planning and policymaking. However, it also raises significant security and privacy concerns, as the data may include identifiable personal information, such as individuals' home locations. To address these concerns, synthetic data generation based on real transportation data offers a promising solution that allows privacy protection while potentially preserving data utility. Although there are various synthetic data generation techniques, they are often not tailored to the unique characteristics of transportation data, such as the inherent structure of transportation networks formed by all trips in the datasets. In this paper, we use New York City taxi data as a case study to conduct a systematic evaluation of the performance of widely used tabular data generative models. In addition to traditional metrics such as distribution similarity, coverage, and privacy preservation, we propose a novel graph-based metric tailored specifically for transportation data. This metric evaluates the similarity between real and synthetic transportation networks, providing potentially deeper insights into their structural and functional alignment. We also introduced an improved privacy metric to address the limitations of the commonly-used one. Our experimental results reveal that existing tabular data generative models often fail to perform as consistently as claimed in the literature, particularly when applied to transportation data use cases. Furthermore, our novel graph metric reveals a significant gap between synthetic and real data. This work underscores the potential need to develop generative models specifically tailored to take advantage of the unique characteristics of emerging domains, such as transportation.
Integrated Data Analysis of Plasma Electron Density Profile Tomography for HL-3 with Gaussian Process Regression
Authors: Cong Wang, Jiahong Chen, Renjie Yang, Dong Li, Zhibin Wang, Zongyu Yang, Zhijun Wang, Yixiong Wei, Zhaoyang Liu, Chenshu Hu, Jing Li
Date: 2025-02-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Diagnostic, GPR, regression

An integrated data analysis model based on Gaussian Process Regression is proposed for plasma electron density profile tomography in the HL-3 tokamak. The model combines line-integral measurements from the far-infrared laser interferometer with point measurements obtained via the frequency-modulated continuous wave reflectometry. By employing Gaussian Process Regression, the model effectively incorporates point measurements into 2D profile reconstructions, while coordinate mapping integrates magnetic equilibrium information. The average relative error of the reconstructed profile obtained by the integrated data analysis model with normalized magnetic flux is as low as 3.60*10^(-4). Additionally, sensitivity tests were conducted on the grid resolution, the standard deviation of diagnostic data, and noise levels, providing a robust foundation for the real application to experimental data.
CLEAR: Cluster-based Prompt Learning on Heterogeneous Graphs
Authors: Feiyang Wang, Zhongbao Zhang, Junda Ye, Li Sun, Jianzhong Qi
Date: 2025-02-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Graph Reconstruction, Node Classification, Prompt Learning

Prompt learning has attracted increasing attention in the graph domain as a means to bridge the gap between pretext and downstream tasks. Existing studies on heterogeneous graph prompting typically use feature prompts to modify node features for specific downstream tasks, which do not concern the structure of heterogeneous graphs. Such a design also overlooks information from the meta-paths, which are core to learning the high-order semantics of the heterogeneous graphs. To address these issues, we propose CLEAR, a Cluster-based prompt LEARNING model on heterogeneous graphs. We present cluster prompts that reformulate downstream tasks as heterogeneous graph reconstruction. In this way, we align the pretext and downstream tasks to share the same training objective. Additionally, our cluster prompts are also injected into the meta-paths such that the prompt learning process incorporates high-order semantic information entailed by the meta-paths. Extensive experiments on downstream tasks confirm the superiority of CLEAR. It consistently outperforms state-of-the-art models, achieving up to 5% improvement on the F1 metric for node classification.
Escaping Collapse: The Strength of Weak Data for Large Language Model Training
Authors: Kareem Amin, Sara Babakniya, Alex Bie, Weiwei Kong, Umar Syed, Sergei Vassilvitskii
Date: 2025-02-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model

Synthetically-generated data plays an increasingly larger role in training large language models. However, while synthetic data has been found to be useful, studies have also shown that without proper curation it can cause LLM performance to plateau, or even "collapse", after many training iterations. In this paper, we formalize this question and develop a theoretical framework to investigate how much curation is needed in order to ensure that LLM performance continually improves. We find that the requirements are nearly minimal. We describe a training procedure that converges to an optimal LLM even if almost all of the non-synthetic training data is of poor quality. Our analysis is inspired by boosting, a classic machine learning technique that leverages a very weak learning algorithm to produce an arbitrarily good classifier. Our training procedure subsumes many recently proposed methods for training LLMs on synthetic data, and thus our analysis sheds light on why they are successful, and also suggests opportunities for future improvement. We present experiments that validate our theory, and show that dynamically focusing labeling resources on the most challenging examples -- in much the same way that boosting focuses the efforts of the weak learner -- leads to improved performance.