pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
A Reproducibility Study of Product-side Fairness in Bundle Recommendation
Authors: Huy-Son Nguyen, Yuanna Liu, Masoud Mansoury, Mohammad Alian Nejadi, Alan Hanjalic, Maarten de Rijke
Date: 2025-07-18 00:00:00
Tasks: Fairness, Recommendation Systems

Recommender systems are known to exhibit fairness issues, particularly on the product side, where products and their associated suppliers receive unequal exposure in recommended results. While this problem has been widely studied in traditional recommendation settings, its implications for bundle recommendation (BR) remain largely unexplored. This emerging task introduces additional complexity: recommendations are generated at the bundle level, yet user satisfaction and product (or supplier) exposure depend on both the bundle and the individual items it contains. Existing fairness frameworks and metrics designed for traditional recommender systems may not directly translate to this multi-layered setting. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive reproducibility study of product-side fairness in BR across three real-world datasets using four state-of-the-art BR methods. We analyze exposure disparities at both the bundle and item levels using multiple fairness metrics, uncovering important patterns. Our results show that exposure patterns differ notably between bundles and items, revealing the need for fairness interventions that go beyond bundle-level assumptions. We also find that fairness assessments vary considerably depending on the metric used, reinforcing the need for multi-faceted evaluation. Furthermore, user behavior plays a critical role: when users interact more frequently with bundles than with individual items, BR systems tend to yield fairer exposure distributions across both levels. Overall, our findings offer actionable insights for building fairer bundle recommender systems and establish a vital foundation for future research in this emerging domain.
RaMen: Multi-Strategy Multi-Modal Learning for Bundle Construction
Authors: Huy-Son Nguyen, Quang-Huy Nguyen, Duc-Hoang Pham, Duc-Trong Le, Hoang-Quynh Le, Padipat Sitkrongwong, Atsuhiro Takasu, Masoud Mansoury
Date: 2025-07-18 00:00:00
Tasks: Transfer Learning

Existing studies on bundle construction have relied merely on user feedback via bipartite graphs or enhanced item representations using semantic information. These approaches fail to capture elaborate relations hidden in real-world bundle structures, resulting in suboptimal bundle representations. To overcome this limitation, we propose RaMen, a novel method that provides a holistic multi-strategy approach for bundle construction. RaMen utilizes both intrinsic (characteristics) and extrinsic (collaborative signals) information to model bundle structures through Explicit Strategy-aware Learning (ESL) and Implicit Strategy-aware Learning (ISL). ESL employs task-specific attention mechanisms to encode multi-modal data and direct collaborative relations between items, thereby explicitly capturing essential bundle features. Moreover, ISL computes hyperedge dependencies and hypergraph message passing to uncover shared latent intents among groups of items. Integrating diverse strategies enables RaMen to learn more comprehensive and robust bundle representations. Meanwhile, Multi-strategy Alignment & Discrimination module is employed to facilitate knowledge transfer between learning strategies and ensure discrimination between items/bundles. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of RaMen over state-of-the-art models on various domains, justifying valuable insights into complex item set problems.
Hear Your Code Fail, Voice-Assisted Debugging for Python
Authors: Sayed Mahbub Hasan Amiri, Md. Mainul Islam, Mohammad Shakhawat Hossen, Sayed Majhab Hasan Amiri, Mohammad Shawkat Ali Mamun, Sk. Humaun Kabir, Naznin Akter
Date: 2025-07-20 00:00:00
Tasks: CPU, Medical Diagnosis, text-to-speech, Text to Speech

This research introduces an innovative voice-assisted debugging plugin for Python that transforms silent runtime errors into actionable audible diagnostics. By implementing a global exception hook architecture with pyttsx3 text-to-speech conversion and Tkinter-based GUI visualization, the solution delivers multimodal error feedback through parallel auditory and visual channels. Empirical evaluation demonstrates 37% reduced cognitive load (p<0.01, n=50) compared to traditional stack-trace debugging, while enabling 78% faster error identification through vocalized exception classification and contextualization. The system achieves sub-1.2 second voice latency with under 18% CPU overhead during exception handling, vocalizing error types and consequences while displaying interactive tracebacks with documentation deep links. Criteria validate compatibility across Python 3.7+ environments on Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms. Needing only two lines of integration code, the plugin significantly boosts availability for aesthetically impaired designers and supports multitasking workflows through hands-free error medical diagnosis. Educational applications show particular promise, with pilot studies indicating 45% faster debugging skill acquisition among novice programmers. Future development will incorporate GPT-based repair suggestions and real-time multilingual translation to further advance auditory debugging paradigms. The solution represents a fundamental shift toward human-centric error diagnostics, bridging critical gaps in programming accessibility while establishing new standards for cognitive efficiency in software development workflows.
Language Integration in Fine-Tuning Multimodal Large Language Models for Image-Based Regression
Authors: Roy H. Jennings, Genady Paikin, Roy Shaul, Evgeny Soloveichik
Date: 2025-07-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Aesthetics Quality Assessment, No-Reference Image Quality Assessment, regression

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) show promise for image-based regression tasks, but current approaches face key limitations. Recent methods fine-tune MLLMs using preset output vocabularies and generic task-level prompts (e.g., "How would you rate this image?"), assuming this mimics human rating behavior. Our analysis reveals these approaches provide no benefit over image-only training. Models using preset vocabularies and generic prompts perform equivalently to image-only models, failing to leverage semantic understanding from textual input. We propose Regression via Transformer-Based Classification (RvTC), which replaces vocabulary-constrained classification with a flexible bin-based approach. Unlike approaches that address discretization errors through complex distributional modeling, RvTC eliminates manual vocabulary crafting through straightforward bin increase, achieving state-of-the-art performance on four image assessment datasets using only images. More importantly, we demonstrate that data-specific prompts dramatically improve performance. Unlike generic task descriptions, prompts containing semantic information about specific images enable MLLMs to leverage cross-modal understanding. On the AVA dataset, adding challenge titles to prompts improves correlations from 0.83 to 0.90, a new state-of-the-art. We demonstrate through empirical evidence from the AVA and AGIQA-3k datasets that MLLMs benefit from semantic prompt information surpassing mere statistical biases. This underscores the importance of incorporating meaningful textual context in multimodal regression tasks.
SeC: Advancing Complex Video Object Segmentation via Progressive Concept Construction
Authors: Zhixiong Zhang, Shuangrui Ding, Xiaoyi Dong, Songxin He, Jianfan Lin, Junsong Tang, Yuhang Zang, Yuhang Cao, Dahua Lin, Jiaqi Wang
Date: 2025-07-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Object, Segmentation, Semantic Segmentation, Video Object Segmentation, Video Semantic Segmentation

Video Object Segmentation (VOS) is a core task in computer vision, requiring models to track and segment target objects across video frames. Despite notable advances with recent efforts, current techniques still lag behind human capabilities in handling drastic visual variations, occlusions, and complex scene changes. This limitation arises from their reliance on appearance matching, neglecting the human-like conceptual understanding of objects that enables robust identification across temporal dynamics. Motivated by this gap, we propose Segment Concept (SeC), a concept-driven segmentation framework that shifts from conventional feature matching to the progressive construction and utilization of high-level, object-centric representations. SeC employs Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) to integrate visual cues across diverse frames, constructing robust conceptual priors. During inference, SeC forms a comprehensive semantic representation of the target based on processed frames, realizing robust segmentation of follow-up frames. Furthermore, SeC adaptively balances LVLM-based semantic reasoning with enhanced feature matching, dynamically adjusting computational efforts based on scene complexity. To rigorously assess VOS methods in scenarios demanding high-level conceptual reasoning and robust semantic understanding, we introduce the Semantic Complex Scenarios Video Object Segmentation benchmark (SeCVOS). SeCVOS comprises 160 manually annotated multi-scenario videos designed to challenge models with substantial appearance variations and dynamic scene transformations. In particular, SeC achieves an 11.8-point improvement over SAM 2.1 on SeCVOS, establishing a new state-of-the-art in concept-aware video object segmentation.
Real Time Captioning of Sign Language Gestures in Video Meetings
Authors: Sharanya Mukherjee, Md Hishaam Akhtar, Kannadasan R
Date: 2025-07-19 00:00:00

It has always been a rather tough task to communicate with someone possessing a hearing impairment. One of the most tested ways to establish such a communication is through the use of sign based languages. However, not many people are aware of the smaller intricacies involved with sign language. Sign language recognition using computer vision aims at eliminating the communication barrier between deaf-mute and ordinary people so that they can properly communicate with others. Recently the pandemic has left the whole world shaken up and has transformed the way we communicate. Video meetings have become essential for everyone, even people with a hearing disability. In recent studies, it has been found that people with hearing disabilities prefer to sign over typing during these video calls. In this paper, we are proposing a browser extension that will automatically translate sign language to subtitles for everyone else in the video call. The Large-scale dataset which contains more than 2000 Word-Level ASL videos, which were performed by over 100 signers will be used.
Loop2Net: Data-Driven Generation and Optimization of Airfoil CFD Meshes from Sparse Boundary Coordinates
Authors: Lushun Fan, Yuqin Xia, Jun Li, Karl Jenkins
Date: 2025-06-28 00:00:00

In this study, an innovative intelligent optimization system for mesh quality is proposed, which is based on a deep convolutional neural network architecture, to achieve mesh generation and optimization. The core of the study is the Loop2Net generator and loss function, it predicts the mesh based on the given wing coordinates. And the model's performance is continuously optimised by two key loss functions during the training. Then discipline by adding penalties, the goal of mesh generation was finally reached.
Turin3D: Evaluating Adaptation Strategies under Label Scarcity in Urban LiDAR Segmentation with Semi-Supervised Techniques
Authors: Luca Barco, Giacomo Blanco, Gaetano Chiriaco, Alessia Intini, Luigi La Riccia, Vittorio Scolamiero, Piero Boccardo, Paolo Garza, Fabrizio Dominici
Date: 2025-06-11 00:00:00
Proceeding: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR) Workshops 2025 6

3D semantic segmentation plays a critical role in urban modelling, enabling detailed understanding and mapping of city environments. In this paper, we introduce Turin3D: a new aerial LiDAR dataset for point cloud semantic segmentation covering an area of around 1.43 km2 in the city centre of Turin with almost 70M points. We describe the data collection process and compare Turin3D with others previously proposed in the literature. We did not fully annotate the dataset due to the complexity and time-consuming nature of the process; however, a manual annotation process was performed on the validation and test sets, to enable a reliable evaluation of the proposed techniques. We first benchmark the performances of several point cloud semantic segmentation models, trained on the existing datasets, when tested on Turin3D, and then improve their performances by applying a semi-supervised learning technique leveraging the unlabelled training set. The dataset will be publicly available to support research in outdoor point cloud segmentation, with particular relevance for self-supervised and semi-supervised learning approaches given the absence of ground truth annotations for the training set.
OSDMamba: Enhancing Oil Spill Detection from Remote Sensing Images Using Selective State Space Model
Authors: Shuaiyu Chen, Fu Wang, Peng Ren, Chunbo Luo, Zeyu Fu
Date: 2025-06-22 00:00:00

Semantic segmentation is commonly used for Oil Spill Detection (OSD) in remote sensing images. However, the limited availability of labelled oil spill samples and class imbalance present significant challenges that can reduce detection accuracy. Furthermore, most existing methods, which rely on convolutional neural networks (CNNs), struggle to detect small oil spill areas due to their limited receptive fields and inability to effectively capture global contextual information. This study explores the potential of State-Space Models (SSMs), particularly Mamba, to overcome these limitations, building on their recent success in vision applications. We propose OSDMamba, the first Mamba-based architecture specifically designed for oil spill detection. OSDMamba leverages Mamba's selective scanning mechanism to effectively expand the model's receptive field while preserving critical details. Moreover, we designed an asymmetric decoder incorporating ConvSSM and deep supervision to strengthen multi-scale feature fusion, thereby enhancing the model's sensitivity to minority class samples. Experimental results show that the proposed OSDMamba achieves state-of-the-art performance, yielding improvements of 8.9% and 11.8% in OSD across two publicly available datasets.
Subliminal Learning: Language models transmit behavioral traits via hidden signals in data
Authors: Alex Cloud, Minh Le, James Chua, Jan Betley, Anna Sztyber-Betley, Jacob Hilton, Samuel Marks, Owain Evans
Date: 2025-07-20 00:00:00

We study subliminal learning, a surprising phenomenon where language models transmit behavioral traits via semantically unrelated data. In our main experiments, a "teacher" model with some trait T (such as liking owls or being misaligned) generates a dataset consisting solely of number sequences. Remarkably, a "student" model trained on this dataset learns T. This occurs even when the data is filtered to remove references to T. We observe the same effect when training on code or reasoning traces generated by the same teacher model. However, we do not observe the effect when the teacher and student have different base models. To help explain our findings, we prove a theoretical result showing that subliminal learning occurs in all neural networks under certain conditions, and demonstrate subliminal learning in a simple MLP classifier. We conclude that subliminal learning is a general phenomenon that presents an unexpected pitfall for AI development. Distillation could propagate unintended traits, even when developers try to prevent this via data filtering.
Text2Stereo: Repurposing Stable Diffusion for Stereo Generation with Consistency Rewards
Authors: Aakash Garg, Libing Zeng, Andrii Tsarov, Nima Khademi Kalantari
Date: 2025-05-27 00:00:00

In this paper, we propose a novel diffusion-based approach to generate stereo images given a text prompt. Since stereo image datasets with large baselines are scarce, training a diffusion model from scratch is not feasible. Therefore, we propose leveraging the strong priors learned by Stable Diffusion and fine-tuning it on stereo image datasets to adapt it to the task of stereo generation. To improve stereo consistency and text-to-image alignment, we further tune the model using prompt alignment and our proposed stereo consistency reward functions. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our approach in generating high-quality stereo images across diverse scenarios, outperforming existing methods.
Recursive KalmanNet: Analyse des capacités de généralisation d'un réseau de neurones récurrent guidé par un filtre de Kalman
Authors: Cyril Falcon, Hassan Mortada, Mathéo Clavaud, Jean-Philippe Michel
Date: 2025-06-25 00:00:00

The Recursive KalmanNet, recently introduced by the authors, is a recurrent neural network guided by a Kalman filter, capable of estimating the state variables and error covariance of stochastic dynamic systems from noisy measurements, without prior knowledge of the noise characteristics. This paper explores its generalization capabilities in out-of-distribution scenarios, where the temporal dynamics of the test measurements differ from those encountered during training. Le Recursive KalmanNet, r\'ecemment introduit par les auteurs, est un r\'eseau de neurones r\'ecurrent guid\'e par un filtre de Kalman, capable d'estimer les variables d'\'etat et la covariance des erreurs des syst\`emes dynamiques stochastiques \`a partir de mesures bruit\'ees, sans connaissance pr\'ealable des caract\'eristiques des bruits. Cet article explore ses capacit\'es de g\'en\'eralisation dans des sc\'enarios hors distribution, o\`u les dynamiques temporelles des mesures de test diff\`erent de celles rencontr\'ees \`a l'entra\^inement.
Adaptive Multi-Agent Reasoning via Automated Workflow Generation
Authors: Humza Sami, Mubashir ul Islam, Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon, Valerio Tenace
Date: 2025-07-18 00:00:00

The rise of Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) promises a significant leap forward in language model capabilities, aiming to tackle increasingly sophisticated tasks with unprecedented efficiency and accuracy. However, despite their impressive performance, recent studies have highlighted how current reasoning models frequently fail to generalize to novel, unseen problems, often resorting to memorized solutions rather than genuine inferential reasoning. Such behavior underscores a critical limitation in modern LRMs, i.e., their tendency toward overfitting, which in turn results in poor generalization in problem-solving capabilities. In this paper, we introduce Nexus Architect, an enhanced iteration of our multi-agent system framework, Nexus, equipped with a novel automated workflow synthesis mechanism. Given a user's prompt and a small set of representative examples, the Architect autonomously generates a tailored reasoning workflow by selecting suitable strategies, tool integrations, and adversarial techniques for a specific problem class. Furthermore, the Architect includes an iterative prompt refinement mechanism that fine-tunes agents' system prompts to maximize performance and improve the generalization capabilities of the system. We empirically evaluate Nexus Architect by employing an off-the-shelf, non-reasoning model on a custom dataset of challenging logical questions and compare its performance against state-of-the-art LRMs. Results show that Nexus Architect consistently outperforms existing solutions, achieving up to a 66% increase in pass rate over Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview, nearly 2.5$\times$ against Claude Sonnet 4 and DeepSeek-R1, and over 3$\times$ w.r.t. Llama 4 Scout.
Paper Summary Attack: Jailbreaking LLMs through LLM Safety Papers
Authors: Liang Lin, Zhihao Xu, Xuehai Tang, Shi Liu, Biyu Zhou, Fuqing Zhu, Jizhong Han, Songlin Hu
Date: 2025-07-17 00:00:00

The safety of large language models (LLMs) has garnered significant research attention. In this paper, we argue that previous empirical studies demonstrate LLMs exhibit a propensity to trust information from authoritative sources, such as academic papers, implying new possible vulnerabilities. To verify this possibility, a preliminary analysis is designed to illustrate our two findings. Based on this insight, a novel jailbreaking method, Paper Summary Attack (\llmname{PSA}), is proposed. It systematically synthesizes content from either attack-focused or defense-focused LLM safety paper to construct an adversarial prompt template, while strategically infilling harmful query as adversarial payloads within predefined subsections. Extensive experiments show significant vulnerabilities not only in base LLMs, but also in state-of-the-art reasoning model like Deepseek-R1. PSA achieves a 97\% attack success rate (ASR) on well-aligned models like Claude3.5-Sonnet and an even higher 98\% ASR on Deepseek-R1. More intriguingly, our work has further revealed diametrically opposed vulnerability bias across different base models, and even between different versions of the same model, when exposed to either attack-focused or defense-focused papers. This phenomenon potentially indicates future research clues for both adversarial methodologies and safety alignment.Code is available at https://github.com/233liang/Paper-Summary-Attack
APTx Neuron: A Unified Trainable Neuron Architecture Integrating Activation and Computation
Authors: Ravin Kumar
Date: 2025-07-18 00:00:00

We propose the APTx Neuron, a novel, unified neural computation unit that integrates non-linear activation and linear transformation into a single trainable expression. The APTx Neuron is derived from the APTx activation function, thereby eliminating the need for separate activation layers and making the architecture both computationally efficient and elegant. The proposed neuron follows the functional form $y = \sum_{i=1}^{n} ((\alpha_i + \tanh(\beta_i x_i)) \cdot \gamma_i x_i) + \delta$, where all parameters $\alpha_i$, $\beta_i$, $\gamma_i$, and $\delta$ are trainable. We validate our APTx Neuron-based architecture on the MNIST dataset, achieving up to 96.69\% test accuracy in just 20 epochs using approximately 332K trainable parameters. The results highlight the superior expressiveness and computational efficiency of the APTx Neuron compared to traditional neurons, pointing toward a new paradigm in unified neuron design and the architectures built upon it.