Physics-Informed Neural Networks with Hard Linear Equality Constraints

Surrogate modeling is used to replace computationally expensive simulations. Neural networks have been widely applied as surrogate models that enable efficient evaluations over complex physical systems. Despite this, neural networks are data-driven models and devoid of any physics. The incorporation of physics into neural networks can improve generalization and data efficiency. The physics-informed neural network (PINN) is an approach to leverage known physical constraints present in the data, but it cannot strictly satisfy them in the predictions. This work proposes a novel physics-informed neural network, KKT-hPINN, which rigorously guarantees hard linear equality constraints through projection layers derived from KKT conditions. Numerical experiments on Aspen models of a continuous stirred-tank reactor (CSTR) unit, an extractive distillation subsystem, and a chemical plant demonstrate that this model can further enhance the prediction accuracy.

UniMOS: A Universal Framework For Multi-Organ Segmentation Over Label-Constrained Datasets

Machine learning models for medical images can help physicians diagnose and manage diseases. However, due to the fact that medical image annotation requires a great deal of manpower and expertise, as well as the fact that clinical departments perform image annotation based on task orientation, there is the problem of having fewer medical image annotation data with more unlabeled data and having many datasets that annotate only a single organ. In this paper, we present UniMOS, the first universal framework for achieving the utilization of fully and partially labeled images as well as unlabeled images. Specifically, we construct a Multi-Organ Segmentation (MOS) module over fully/partially labeled data as the basenet and designed a new target adaptive loss. Furthermore, we incorporate a semi-supervised training module that combines consistent regularization and pseudolabeling techniques on unlabeled data, which significantly improves the segmentation of unlabeled data. Experiments show that the framework exhibits excellent performance in several medical image segmentation tasks compared to other advanced methods, and also significantly improves data utilization and reduces annotation cost. Code and models are available at: https://github.com/lw8807001/UniMOS.

FERI: A Multitask-based Fairness Achieving Algorithm with Applications to Fair Organ Transplantation

Liver transplantation often faces fairness challenges across subgroups defined by sensitive attributes like age group, gender, and race/ethnicity. Machine learning models for outcome prediction can introduce additional biases. To address these, we introduce Fairness through the Equitable Rate of Improvement in Multitask Learning (FERI) algorithm for fair predictions of graft failure risk in liver transplant patients. FERI constrains subgroup loss by balancing learning rates and preventing subgroup dominance in the training process. Our experiments show that FERI maintains high predictive accuracy with AUROC and AUPRC comparable to baseline models. More importantly, FERI demonstrates an ability to improve fairness without sacrificing accuracy. Specifically, for gender, FERI reduces the demographic parity disparity by 71.74%, and for the age group, it decreases the equalized odds disparity by 40.46%. Therefore, the FERI algorithm advances fairness-aware predictive modeling in healthcare and provides an invaluable tool for equitable healthcare systems.

DiskANN++: Efficient Page-based Search over Isomorphic Mapped Graph Index using Query-sensitivity Entry Vertex

Given a vector dataset $\mathcal{X}$ and a query vector $\vec{x}_q$, graph-based Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search (ANNS) aims to build a graph index $G$ and approximately return vectors with minimum distances to $\vec{x}_q$ by searching over $G$. The main drawback of graph-based ANNS is that a graph index would be too large to fit into the memory especially for a large-scale $\mathcal{X}$. To solve this, a Product Quantization (PQ)-based hybrid method called DiskANN is proposed to store a low-dimensional PQ index in memory and retain a graph index in SSD, thus reducing memory overhead while ensuring a high search accuracy. However, it suffers from two I/O issues that significantly affect the overall efficiency: (1) long routing path from an entry vertex to the query's neighborhood that results in large number of I/O requests and (2) redundant I/O requests during the routing process. We propose an optimized DiskANN++ to overcome above issues. Specifically, for the first issue, we present a query-sensitive entry vertex selection strategy to replace DiskANN's static graph-central entry vertex by a dynamically determined entry vertex that is close to the query. For the second I/O issue, we present an isomorphic mapping on DiskANN's graph index to optimize the SSD layout and propose an asynchronously optimized Pagesearch based on the optimized SSD layout as an alternative to DiskANN's beamsearch. Comprehensive experimental studies on eight real-world datasets demonstrate our DiskANN++'s superiority on efficiency. We achieve a notable 1.5 X to 2.2 X improvement on QPS compared to DiskANN, given the same accuracy constraint.

SpikeMOT: Event-based Multi-Object Tracking with Sparse Motion Features

In comparison to conventional RGB cameras, the superior temporal resolution of event cameras allows them to capture rich information between frames, making them prime candidates for object tracking. Yet in practice, despite their theoretical advantages, the body of work on event-based multi-object tracking (MOT) remains in its infancy, especially in real-world settings where events from complex background and camera motion can easily obscure the true target motion. In this work, an event-based multi-object tracker, called SpikeMOT, is presented to address these challenges. SpikeMOT leverages spiking neural networks to extract sparse spatiotemporal features from event streams associated with objects. The resulting spike train representations are used to track the object movement at high frequency, while a simultaneous object detector provides updated spatial information of these objects at an equivalent frame rate. To evaluate the effectiveness of SpikeMOT, we introduce DSEC-MOT, the first large-scale event-based MOT benchmark incorporating fine-grained annotations for objects experiencing severe occlusions, frequent trajectory intersections, and long-term re-identification in real-world contexts. Extensive experiments employing DSEC-MOT and another event-based dataset, named FE240hz, demonstrate SpikeMOT's capability to achieve high tracking accuracy amidst challenging real-world scenarios, advancing the state-of-the-art in event-based multi-object tracking.

Diagnosing Infeasible Optimization Problems Using Large Language Models

Decision-making problems can be represented as mathematical optimization models, finding wide applications in fields such as economics, engineering and manufacturing, transportation, and health care. Optimization models are mathematical abstractions of the problem of making the best decision while satisfying a set of requirements or constraints. One of the primary barriers to deploying these models in practice is the challenge of helping practitioners understand and interpret such models, particularly when they are infeasible, meaning no decision satisfies all the constraints. Existing methods for diagnosing infeasible optimization models often rely on expert systems, necessitating significant background knowledge in optimization. In this paper, we introduce OptiChat, a first-of-its-kind natural language-based system equipped with a chatbot GUI for engaging in interactive conversations about infeasible optimization models. OptiChat can provide natural language descriptions of the optimization model itself, identify potential sources of infeasibility, and offer suggestions to make the model feasible. The implementation of OptiChat is built on GPT-4, which interfaces with an optimization solver to identify the minimal subset of constraints that render the entire optimization problem infeasible, also known as the Irreducible Infeasible Subset (IIS). We utilize few-shot learning, expert chain-of-thought, key-retrieve, and sentiment prompts to enhance OptiChat's reliability. Our experiments demonstrate that OptiChat assists both expert and non-expert users in improving their understanding of the optimization models, enabling them to quickly identify the sources of infeasibility.

Realizing In-Memory Baseband Processing for Ultra-Fast and Energy-Efficient 6G

To support emerging applications ranging from holographic communications to extended reality, next-generation mobile wireless communication systems require ultra-fast and energy-efficient baseband processors. Traditional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-based baseband processors face two challenges in transistor scaling and the von Neumann bottleneck. To address these challenges, in-memory computing-based baseband processors using resistive random-access memory (RRAM) present an attractive solution. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate RRAM-implemented in-memory baseband processing for the widely adopted multiple-input-multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) air interface. Its key feature is to execute the key operations, including discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and MIMO detection using linear minimum mean square error (L-MMSE) and zero forcing (ZF), in one-step. In addition, RRAM-based channel estimation module is proposed and discussed. By prototyping and simulations, we demonstrate the feasibility of RRAM-based full-fledged communication system in hardware, and reveal it can outperform state-of-the-art baseband processors with a gain of 91.2$\times$ in latency and 671$\times$ in energy efficiency by large-scale simulations. Our results pave a potential pathway for RRAM-based in-memory computing to be implemented in the era of the sixth generation (6G) mobile communications.

A Voice Disease Detection Method Based on MFCCs and Shallow CNN

The incidence rate of voice diseases is increasing year by year. The use of software for remote diagnosis is a technical development trend and has important practical value. Among voice diseases, common diseases that cause hoarseness include spasmodic dysphonia, vocal cord paralysis, vocal nodule, and vocal cord polyp. This paper presents a voice disease detection method that can be applied in a wide range of clinical. We cooperated with Xiangya Hospital of Central South University to collect voice samples from sixty-one different patients. The Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient (MFCC) parameters are extracted as input features to describe the voice in the form of data. An innovative model combining MFCC parameters and single convolution layer CNN is proposed for fast calculation and classification. The highest accuracy we achieved was 92%, it is fully ahead of the original research results and internationally advanced. And we use Advanced Voice Function Assessment Databases (AVFAD) to evaluate the generalization ability of the method we proposed, which achieved an accuracy rate of 98%. Experiments on clinical and standard datasets show that for the pathological detection of voice diseases, our method has greatly improved in accuracy and computational efficiency.

A Transformer-Based Deep Learning Approach for Fairly Predicting Post-Liver Transplant Risk Factors

Liver transplantation is a life-saving procedure for patients with end-stage liver disease. There are two main challenges in liver transplant: finding the best matching patient for a donor and ensuring transplant equity among different subpopulations. The current MELD scoring system evaluates a patient's mortality risk if not receiving an organ within 90 days. However, the donor-patient matching should also take into consideration post-transplant risk factors, such as cardiovascular disease, chronic rejection, etc., which are all common complications after transplant. Accurate prediction of these risk scores remains a significant challenge. In this study, we will use predictive models to solve the above challenge. We propose a deep learning framework model to predict multiple risk factors after a liver transplant. By formulating it as a multi-task learning problem, the proposed deep neural network was trained on this data to simultaneously predict the five post-transplant risks and achieve equally good performance by leveraging task balancing techniques. We also propose a novel fairness achieving algorithm and to ensure prediction fairness across different subpopulations. We used electronic health records of 160,360 liver transplant patients, including demographic information, clinical variables, and laboratory values, collected from the liver transplant records of the United States from 1987 to 2018. The performance of the model was evaluated using various performance metrics such as AUROC, AURPC, and accuracy. The results of our experiments demonstrate that the proposed multitask prediction model achieved high accuracy and good balance in predicting all five post-transplant risk factors, with a maximum accuracy discrepancy of only 2.7%. The fairness-achieving algorithm significantly reduced the fairness disparity compared to the baseline model.

A Bibliometric Analysis and Review on Reinforcement Learning for Transportation Applications

Transportation is the backbone of the economy and urban development. Improving the efficiency, sustainability, resilience, and intelligence of transportation systems is critical and also challenging. The constantly changing traffic conditions, the uncertain influence of external factors (e.g., weather, accidents), and the interactions among multiple travel modes and multi-type flows result in the dynamic and stochastic natures of transportation systems. The planning, operation, and control of transportation systems require flexible and adaptable strategies in order to deal with uncertainty, non-linearity, variability, and high complexity. In this context, Reinforcement Learning (RL) that enables autonomous decision-makers to interact with the complex environment, learn from the experiences, and select optimal actions has been rapidly emerging as one of the most useful approaches for smart transportation. This paper conducts a bibliometric analysis to identify the development of RL-based methods for transportation applications, typical journals/conferences, and leading topics in the field of intelligent transportation in recent ten years. Then, this paper presents a comprehensive literature review on applications of RL in transportation by categorizing different methods with respect to the specific application domains. The potential future research directions of RL applications and developments are also discussed.