Enhancing Deepfake Detection using SE Block Attention with CNN

In the digital age, Deepfake present a formidable challenge by using advanced artificial intelligence to create highly convincing manipulated content, undermining information authenticity and security. These sophisticated fabrications surpass traditional detection methods in complexity and realism. To address this issue, we aim to harness cutting-edge deep learning methodologies to engineer an innovative deepfake detection model. However, most of the models designed for deepfake detection are large, causing heavy storage and memory consumption. In this research, we propose a lightweight convolution neural network (CNN) with squeeze and excitation block attention (SE) for Deepfake detection. The SE block module is designed to perform dynamic channel-wise feature recalibration. The SE block allows the network to emphasize informative features and suppress less useful ones, which leads to a more efficient and effective learning module. This module is integrated with a simple sequential model to perform Deepfake detection. The model is smaller in size and it achieves competing accuracy with the existing models for deepfake detection tasks. The model achieved an overall classification accuracy of 94.14% and AUC-ROC score of 0.985 on the Style GAN dataset from the Diverse Fake Face Dataset. Our proposed approach presents a promising avenue for combating the Deepfake challenge with minimal computational resources, developing efficient and scalable solutions for digital content verification.

CURE: Concept Unlearning via Orthogonal Representation Editing in Diffusion Models

As Text-to-Image models continue to evolve, so does the risk of generating unsafe, copyrighted, or privacy-violating content. Existing safety interventions - ranging from training data curation and model fine-tuning to inference-time filtering and guidance - often suffer from incomplete concept removal, susceptibility to jail-breaking, computational inefficiency, or collateral damage to unrelated capabilities. In this paper, we introduce CURE, a training-free concept unlearning framework that operates directly in the weight space of pre-trained diffusion models, enabling fast, interpretable, and highly specific suppression of undesired concepts. At the core of our method is the Spectral Eraser, a closed-form, orthogonal projection module that identifies discriminative subspaces using Singular Value Decomposition over token embeddings associated with the concepts to forget and retain. Intuitively, the Spectral Eraser identifies and isolates features unique to the undesired concept while preserving safe attributes. This operator is then applied in a single step update to yield an edited model in which the target concept is effectively unlearned - without retraining, supervision, or iterative optimization. To balance the trade-off between filtering toxicity and preserving unrelated concepts, we further introduce an Expansion Mechanism for spectral regularization which selectively modulates singular vectors based on their relative significance to control the strength of forgetting. All the processes above are in closed-form, guaranteeing extremely efficient erasure in only $2$ seconds. Benchmarking against prior approaches, CURE achieves a more efficient and thorough removal for targeted artistic styles, objects, identities, or explicit content, with minor damage to original generation ability and demonstrates enhanced robustness against red-teaming.

LogicTree: Structured Proof Exploration for Coherent and Rigorous Logical Reasoning with Large Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable multi-step reasoning capabilities across various domains. However, LLMs still face distinct challenges in complex logical reasoning, as (1) proof-finding requires systematic exploration and the maintenance of logical coherence and (2) searching the right combination of premises at each reasoning step is inherently challenging in tasks with large premise space. To address this, we propose LogicTree, an inference-time modular framework employing algorithm-guided search to automate structured proof exploration and ensure logical coherence. Advancing beyond tree-of-thought (ToT), we incorporate caching mechanism into LogicTree to enable effective utilization of historical knowledge, preventing reasoning stagnation and minimizing redundancy. Furthermore, we address the combinatorial complexity of premise search by decomposing it into a linear process. The refined premise selection restricts subsequent inference to at most one derivation per step, enhancing reasoning granularity and enforcing strict step-by-step reasoning. Additionally, we introduce two LLM-free heuristics for premise prioritization, enabling strategic proof search. Experimental results on five datasets demonstrate that LogicTree optimally scales inference-time computation to achieve higher proof accuracy, surpassing chain-of-thought (CoT) and ToT with average gains of 23.6% and 12.5%, respectively, on GPT-4o. Moreover, within LogicTree, GPT-4o outperforms o3-mini by 7.6% on average.

Towards Scalable Modeling of Compressed Videos for Efficient Action Recognition

Training robust deep video representations has proven to be computationally challenging due to substantial decoding overheads, the enormous size of raw video streams, and their inherent high temporal redundancy. Different from existing schemes, operating exclusively in the compressed video domain and exploiting all freely available modalities, i.e., I-frames, and P-frames (motion vectors and residuals) offers a compute-efficient alternative. Existing methods approach this task as a naive multi-modality problem, ignoring the temporal correlation and implicit sparsity across P-frames for modeling stronger shared representations for videos of the same action, making training and generalization easier. By revisiting the high-level design of dominant video understanding backbones, we increase inference speed by a factor of $56$ while retaining similar performance. For this, we propose a hybrid end-to-end framework that factorizes learning across three key concepts to reduce inference cost by $330\times$ versus prior art: First, a specially designed dual-encoder scheme with efficient Spiking Temporal Modulators to minimize latency while retaining cross-domain feature aggregation. Second, a unified transformer model to capture inter-modal dependencies using global self-attention to enhance I-frame -- P-frame contextual interactions. Third, a Multi-Modal Mixer Block to model rich representations from the joint spatiotemporal token embeddings. Experiments show that our method results in a lightweight architecture achieving state-of-the-art video recognition performance on UCF-101, HMDB-51, K-400, K-600 and SS-v2 datasets with favorable costs ($0.73$J/V) and fast inference ($16$V/s). Our observations bring new insights into practical design choices for efficient next-generation spatiotemporal learners. Code is available.

Finding the Muses: Identifying Coresets through Loss Trajectories

Deep learning models achieve state-of-the-art performance across domains but face scalability challenges in real-time or resource-constrained scenarios. To address this, we propose Loss Trajectory Correlation (LTC), a novel metric for coreset selection that identifies critical training samples driving generalization. $LTC$ quantifies the alignment between training sample loss trajectories and validation set loss trajectories, enabling the construction of compact, representative subsets. Unlike traditional methods with computational and storage overheads that are infeasible to scale to large datasets, $LTC$ achieves superior efficiency as it can be computed as a byproduct of training. Our results on CIFAR-100 and ImageNet-1k show that $LTC$ consistently achieves accuracy on par with or surpassing state-of-the-art coreset selection methods, with any differences remaining under 1%. LTC also effectively transfers across various architectures, including ResNet, VGG, DenseNet, and Swin Transformer, with minimal performance degradation (<2%). Additionally, LTC offers insights into training dynamics, such as identifying aligned and conflicting sample behaviors, at a fraction of the computational cost of traditional methods. This framework paves the way for scalable coreset selection and efficient dataset optimization.

Real-Time Neuromorphic Navigation: Guiding Physical Robots with Event-Based Sensing and Task-Specific Reconfigurable Autonomy Stack

Neuromorphic vision, inspired by biological neural systems, has recently gained significant attention for its potential in enhancing robotic autonomy. This paper presents a systematic exploration of a proposed Neuromorphic Navigation framework that uses event-based neuromorphic vision to enable efficient, real-time navigation in robotic systems. We discuss the core concepts of neuromorphic vision and navigation, highlighting their impact on improving robotic perception and decision-making. The proposed reconfigurable Neuromorphic Navigation framework adapts to the specific needs of both ground robots (Turtlebot) and aerial robots (Bebop2 quadrotor), addressing the task-specific design requirements (algorithms) for optimal performance across the autonomous navigation stack -- Perception, Planning, and Control. We demonstrate the versatility and the effectiveness of the framework through two case studies: a Turtlebot performing local replanning for real-time navigation and a Bebop2 quadrotor navigating through moving gates. Our work provides a scalable approach to task-specific, real-time robot autonomy leveraging neuromorphic systems, paving the way for energy-efficient autonomous navigation.

Learning to Localize Leakage of Cryptographic Sensitive Variables

While cryptographic algorithms such as the ubiquitous Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) are secure, *physical implementations* of these algorithms in hardware inevitably 'leak' sensitive data such as cryptographic keys. A particularly insidious form of leakage arises from the fact that hardware consumes power and emits radiation in a manner that is statistically associated with the data it processes and the instructions it executes. Supervised deep learning has emerged as a state-of-the-art tool for carrying out *side-channel attacks*, which exploit this leakage by learning to map power/radiation measurements throughout encryption to the sensitive data operated on during that encryption. In this work we develop a principled deep learning framework for determining the relative leakage due to measurements recorded at different points in time, in order to inform *defense* against such attacks. This information is invaluable to cryptographic hardware designers for understanding *why* their hardware leaks and how they can mitigate it (e.g. by indicating the particular sections of code or electronic components which are responsible). Our framework is based on an adversarial game between a family of classifiers trained to estimate the conditional distributions of sensitive data given subsets of measurements, and a budget-constrained noise distribution which probabilistically erases individual measurements to maximize the loss of these classifiers. We demonstrate our method's efficacy and ability to overcome limitations of prior work through extensive experimental comparison with 8 baseline methods using 3 evaluation metrics and 6 publicly-available power/EM trace datasets from AES, ECC and RSA implementations. We provide an open-source PyTorch implementation of these experiments.

Energy-Efficient Autonomous Aerial Navigation with Dynamic Vision Sensors: A Physics-Guided Neuromorphic Approach

Vision-based object tracking is a critical component for achieving autonomous aerial navigation, particularly for obstacle avoidance. Neuromorphic Dynamic Vision Sensors (DVS) or event cameras, inspired by biological vision, offer a promising alternative to conventional frame-based cameras. These cameras can detect changes in intensity asynchronously, even in challenging lighting conditions, with a high dynamic range and resistance to motion blur. Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are increasingly used to process these event-based signals efficiently and asynchronously. Meanwhile, physics-based artificial intelligence (AI) provides a means to incorporate system-level knowledge into neural networks via physical modeling. This enhances robustness, energy efficiency, and provides symbolic explainability. In this work, we present a neuromorphic navigation framework for autonomous drone navigation. The focus is on detecting and navigating through moving gates while avoiding collisions. We use event cameras for detecting moving objects through a shallow SNN architecture in an unsupervised manner. This is combined with a lightweight energy-aware physics-guided neural network (PgNN) trained with depth inputs to predict optimal flight times, generating near-minimum energy paths. The system is implemented in the Gazebo simulator and integrates a sensor-fused vision-to-planning neuro-symbolic framework built with the Robot Operating System (ROS) middleware. This work highlights the future potential of integrating event-based vision with physics-guided planning for energy-efficient autonomous navigation, particularly for low-latency decision-making.

Intelligent Sensing-to-Action for Robust Autonomy at the Edge: Opportunities and Challenges

Autonomous edge computing in robotics, smart cities, and autonomous vehicles relies on the seamless integration of sensing, processing, and actuation for real-time decision-making in dynamic environments. At its core is the sensing-to-action loop, which iteratively aligns sensor inputs with computational models to drive adaptive control strategies. These loops can adapt to hyper-local conditions, enhancing resource efficiency and responsiveness, but also face challenges such as resource constraints, synchronization delays in multi-modal data fusion, and the risk of cascading errors in feedback loops. This article explores how proactive, context-aware sensing-to-action and action-to-sensing adaptations can enhance efficiency by dynamically adjusting sensing and computation based on task demands, such as sensing a very limited part of the environment and predicting the rest. By guiding sensing through control actions, action-to-sensing pathways can improve task relevance and resource use, but they also require robust monitoring to prevent cascading errors and maintain reliability. Multi-agent sensing-action loops further extend these capabilities through coordinated sensing and actions across distributed agents, optimizing resource use via collaboration. Additionally, neuromorphic computing, inspired by biological systems, provides an efficient framework for spike-based, event-driven processing that conserves energy, reduces latency, and supports hierarchical control--making it ideal for multi-agent optimization. This article highlights the importance of end-to-end co-design strategies that align algorithmic models with hardware and environmental dynamics and improve cross-layer interdependencies to improve throughput, precision, and adaptability for energy-efficient edge autonomy in complex environments.

TESS: A Scalable Temporally and Spatially Local Learning Rule for Spiking Neural Networks

The demand for low-power inference and training of deep neural networks (DNNs) on edge devices has intensified the need for algorithms that are both scalable and energy-efficient. While spiking neural networks (SNNs) allow for efficient inference by processing complex spatio-temporal dynamics in an event-driven fashion, training them on resource-constrained devices remains challenging due to the high computational and memory demands of conventional error backpropagation (BP)-based approaches. In this work, we draw inspiration from biological mechanisms such as eligibility traces, spike-timing-dependent plasticity, and neural activity synchronization to introduce TESS, a temporally and spatially local learning rule for training SNNs. Our approach addresses both temporal and spatial credit assignments by relying solely on locally available signals within each neuron, thereby allowing computational and memory overheads to scale linearly with the number of neurons, independently of the number of time steps. Despite relying on local mechanisms, we demonstrate performance comparable to the backpropagation through time (BPTT) algorithm, within $\sim1.4$ accuracy points on challenging computer vision scenarios relevant at the edge, such as the IBM DVS Gesture dataset, CIFAR10-DVS, and temporal versions of CIFAR10, and CIFAR100. Being able to produce comparable performance to BPTT while keeping low time and memory complexity, TESS enables efficient and scalable on-device learning at the edge.