Contrast-Invariant Self-supervised Segmentation for Quantitative Placental MRI

Accurate placental segmentation is essential for quantitative analysis of the placenta. However, this task is particularly challenging in T2*-weighted placental imaging due to: (1) weak and inconsistent boundary contrast across individual echoes; (2) the absence of manual ground truth annotations for all echo times; and (3) motion artifacts across echoes caused by fetal and maternal movement. In this work, we propose a contrast-augmented segmentation framework that leverages complementary information across multi-echo T2*-weighted MRI to learn robust, contrast-invariant representations. Our method integrates: (i) masked autoencoding (MAE) for self-supervised pretraining on unlabeled multi-echo slices; (ii) masked pseudo-labeling (MPL) for unsupervised domain adaptation across echo times; and (iii) global-local collaboration to align fine-grained features with global anatomical context. We further introduce a semantic matching loss to encourage representation consistency across echoes of the same subject. Experiments on a clinical multi-echo placental MRI dataset demonstrate that our approach generalizes effectively across echo times and outperforms both single-echo and naive fusion baselines. To our knowledge, this is the first work to systematically exploit multi-echo T2*-weighted MRI for placental segmentation.

Leveraging large language models and traditional machine learning ensembles for ADHD detection from narrative transcripts

Despite rapid advances in large language models (LLMs), their integration with traditional supervised machine learning (ML) techniques that have proven applicability to medical data remains underexplored. This is particularly true for psychiatric applications, where narrative data often exhibit nuanced linguistic and contextual complexity, and can benefit from the combination of multiple models with differing characteristics. In this study, we introduce an ensemble framework for automatically classifying Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnosis (binary) using narrative transcripts. Our approach integrates three complementary models: LLaMA3, an open-source LLM that captures long-range semantic structure; RoBERTa, a pre-trained transformer model fine-tuned on labeled clinical narratives; and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier trained using TF-IDF-based lexical features. These models are aggregated through a majority voting mechanism to enhance predictive robustness. The dataset includes 441 instances, including 352 for training and 89 for validation. Empirical results show that the ensemble outperforms individual models, achieving an F$_1$ score of 0.71 (95\% CI: [0.60-0.80]). Compared to the best-performing individual model (SVM), the ensemble improved recall while maintaining competitive precision. This indicates the strong sensitivity of the ensemble in identifying ADHD-related linguistic cues. These findings demonstrate the promise of hybrid architectures that leverage the semantic richness of LLMs alongside the interpretability and pattern recognition capabilities of traditional supervised ML, offering a new direction for robust and generalizable psychiatric text classification.

Artificial Intelligence Bias on English Language Learners in Automatic Scoring

This study investigated potential scoring biases and disparities toward English Language Learners (ELLs) when using automatic scoring systems for middle school students' written responses to science assessments. We specifically focus on examining how unbalanced training data with ELLs contributes to scoring bias and disparities. We fine-tuned BERT with four datasets: responses from (1) ELLs, (2) non-ELLs, (3) a mixed dataset reflecting the real-world proportion of ELLs and non-ELLs (unbalanced), and (4) a balanced mixed dataset with equal representation of both groups. The study analyzed 21 assessment items: 10 items with about 30,000 ELL responses, five items with about 1,000 ELL responses, and six items with about 200 ELL responses. Scoring accuracy (Acc) was calculated and compared to identify bias using Friedman tests. We measured the Mean Score Gaps (MSGs) between ELLs and non-ELLs and then calculated the differences in MSGs generated through both the human and AI models to identify the scoring disparities. We found that no AI bias and distorted disparities between ELLs and non-ELLs were found when the training dataset was large enough (ELL = 30,000 and ELL = 1,000), but concerns could exist if the sample size is limited (ELL = 200).

SPAST: Arbitrary Style Transfer with Style Priors via Pre-trained Large-scale Model

Given an arbitrary content and style image, arbitrary style transfer aims to render a new stylized image which preserves the content image's structure and possesses the style image's style. Existing arbitrary style transfer methods are based on either small models or pre-trained large-scale models. The small model-based methods fail to generate high-quality stylized images, bringing artifacts and disharmonious patterns. The pre-trained large-scale model-based methods can generate high-quality stylized images but struggle to preserve the content structure and cost long inference time. To this end, we propose a new framework, called SPAST, to generate high-quality stylized images with less inference time. Specifically, we design a novel Local-global Window Size Stylization Module (LGWSSM)tofuse style features into content features. Besides, we introduce a novel style prior loss, which can dig out the style priors from a pre-trained large-scale model into the SPAST and motivate the SPAST to generate high-quality stylized images with short inference time.We conduct abundant experiments to verify that our proposed method can generate high-quality stylized images and less inference time compared with the SOTA arbitrary style transfer methods.

Saliency-driven Dynamic Token Pruning for Large Language Models

Despite the recent success of large language models (LLMs), LLMs are particularly challenging in long-sequence inference scenarios due to the quadratic computational complexity of the attention mechanism. Inspired by the interpretability theory of feature attribution in neural network models, we observe that not all tokens have the same contribution. Based on this observation, we propose a novel token pruning framework, namely Saliency-driven Dynamic Token Pruning (SDTP), to gradually and dynamically prune redundant tokens based on the input context. Specifically, a lightweight saliency-driven prediction module is designed to estimate the importance score of each token with its hidden state, which is added to different layers of the LLM to hierarchically prune redundant tokens. Furthermore, a ranking-based optimization strategy is proposed to minimize the ranking divergence of the saliency score and the predicted importance score. Extensive experiments have shown that our framework is generalizable to various models and datasets. By hierarchically pruning 65\% of the input tokens, our method greatly reduces 33\% $\sim$ 47\% FLOPs and achieves speedup up to 1.75$\times$ during inference, while maintaining comparable performance. We further demonstrate that SDTP can be combined with KV cache compression method for further compression.

FusionSegReID: Advancing Person Re-Identification with Multimodal Retrieval and Precise Segmentation

Person re-identification (ReID) plays a critical role in applications like security surveillance and criminal investigations by matching individuals across large image galleries captured by non-overlapping cameras. Traditional ReID methods rely on unimodal inputs, typically images, but face limitations due to challenges like occlusions, lighting changes, and pose variations. While advancements in image-based and text-based ReID systems have been made, the integration of both modalities has remained under-explored. This paper presents FusionSegReID, a multimodal model that combines both image and text inputs for enhanced ReID performance. By leveraging the complementary strengths of these modalities, our model improves matching accuracy and robustness, particularly in complex, real-world scenarios where one modality may struggle. Our experiments show significant improvements in Top-1 accuracy and mean Average Precision (mAP) for ReID, as well as better segmentation results in challenging scenarios like occlusion and low-quality images. Ablation studies further confirm that multimodal fusion and segmentation modules contribute to enhanced re-identification and mask accuracy. The results show that FusionSegReID outperforms traditional unimodal models, offering a more robust and flexible solution for real-world person ReID tasks.

DyArtbank: Diverse Artistic Style Transfer via Pre-trained Stable Diffusion and Dynamic Style Prompt Artbank

Artistic style transfer aims to transfer the learned style onto an arbitrary content image. However, most existing style transfer methods can only render consistent artistic stylized images, making it difficult for users to get enough stylized images to enjoy. To solve this issue, we propose a novel artistic style transfer framework called DyArtbank, which can generate diverse and highly realistic artistic stylized images. Specifically, we introduce a Dynamic Style Prompt ArtBank (DSPA), a set of learnable parameters. It can learn and store the style information from the collection of artworks, dynamically guiding pre-trained stable diffusion to generate diverse and highly realistic artistic stylized images. DSPA can also generate random artistic image samples with the learned style information, providing a new idea for data augmentation. Besides, a Key Content Feature Prompt (KCFP) module is proposed to provide sufficient content prompts for pre-trained stable diffusion to preserve the detailed structure of the input content image. Extensive qualitative and quantitative experiments verify the effectiveness of our proposed method. Code is available: https://github.com/Jamie-Cheung/DyArtbank

Reflection on Data Storytelling Tools in the Generative AI Era from the Human-AI Collaboration Perspective

Human-AI collaborative tools attract attentions from the data storytelling community to lower the barrier of expertise and streamline the workflow. The recent advance in large-scale generative AI techniques, e.g., large language models (LLMs) and text-to-image models, has the potential to enhance data storytelling with their power in visual and narration generation. After two years since these techniques were publicly available, it is important to reflect our progress of applying them and have an outlook for future opportunities. To achieve the goal, we compare the collaboration patterns of the latest tools with those of earlier ones using a dedicated framework for understanding human-AI collaboration in data storytelling. Through comparison, we identify persistent collaboration patterns, e.g., human-creator + AI-assistant, and emerging ones, e.g., AI-creator + human-reviewer. The benefits of these AI techniques and other implications to human-AI collaboration are also revealed. We further propose future directions to hopefully ignite innovations.

Exploring Embodied Emotional Communication: A Human-oriented Review of Mediated Social Touch

This paper offers a structured understanding of mediated social touch (MST) using a human-oriented approach, through an extensive review of literature spanning tactile interfaces, emotional information, mapping mechanisms, and the dynamics of human-human and human-robot interactions. By investigating the existing and exploratory mapping strategies of the 37 selected MST cases, we established the emotional expression space of MSTs that accommodated a diverse spectrum of emotions by integrating the categorical and Valence-arousal models, showcasing how emotional cues can be translated into tactile signals. Based on the expressive capacity of MSTs, a practical design space was structured encompassing factors such as the body locations, device form, tactile modalities, and parameters. We also proposed various design strategies for MSTs including workflow, evaluation methods, and ethical and cultural considerations, as well as several future research directions. MSTs' potential is reflected not only in conveying emotional information but also in fostering empathy, comfort, and connection in both human-human and human-robot interactions. This paper aims to serve as a comprehensive reference for design researchers and practitioners, which helps expand the scope of emotional communication of MSTs, facilitating the exploration of diverse applications of affective haptics, and enhancing the naturalness and sociability of haptic interaction.

FlowMamba: Learning Point Cloud Scene Flow with Global Motion Propagation

Scene flow methods based on deep learning have achieved impressive performance. However, current top-performing methods still struggle with ill-posed regions, such as extensive flat regions or occlusions, due to insufficient local evidence. In this paper, we propose a novel global-aware scene flow estimation network with global motion propagation, named FlowMamba. The core idea of FlowMamba is a novel Iterative Unit based on the State Space Model (ISU), which first propagates global motion patterns and then adaptively integrates the global motion information with previously hidden states. As the irregular nature of point clouds limits the performance of ISU in global motion propagation, we propose a feature-induced ordering strategy (FIO). The FIO leverages semantic-related and motion-related features to order points into a sequence characterized by spatial continuity. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of FlowMamba, with 21.9\% and 20.5\% EPE3D reduction from the best published results on FlyingThings3D and KITTI datasets. Specifically, our FlowMamba is the first method to achieve millimeter-level prediction accuracy in FlyingThings3D and KITTI. Furthermore, the proposed ISU can be seamlessly embedded into existing iterative networks as a plug-and-play module, improving their estimation accuracy significantly.