Low-Complexity Distributed Combining Design for Near-Field Cell-Free XL-MIMO Systems

In this paper, we investigate the low-complexity distributed combining scheme design for near-field cell-free extremely large-scale multiple-input-multiple-output (CF XL-MIMO) systems. Firstly, we construct the uplink spectral efficiency (SE) performance analysis framework for CF XL-MIMO systems over centralized and distributed processing schemes. Notably, we derive the centralized minimum mean-square error (CMMSE) and local minimum mean-square error (LMMSE) combining schemes over arbitrary channel estimators. Then, focusing on the CMMSE and LMMSE combining schemes, we propose five low-complexity distributed combining schemes based on the matrix approximation methodology or the symmetric successive over relaxation (SSOR) algorithm. More specifically, we propose two matrix approximation methodology-aided combining schemes: Global Statistics \& Local Instantaneous information-based MMSE (GSLI-MMSE) and Statistics matrix Inversion-based LMMSE (SI-LMMSE). These two schemes are derived by approximating the global instantaneous information in the CMMSE combining and the local instantaneous information in the LMMSE combining with the global and local statistics information by asymptotic analysis and matrix expectation approximation, respectively. Moreover, by applying the low-complexity SSOR algorithm to iteratively solve the matrix inversion in the LMMSE combining, we derive three distributed SSOR-based LMMSE combining schemes, distinguished from the applied information and initial values.

Statistics Approximation-Enabled Distributed Beamforming for Cell-Free Massive MIMO

We study a distributed beamforming approach for cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output networks, referred to as Global Statistics \& Local Instantaneous information-based minimum mean-square error (GSLI-MMSE). The scenario with multi-antenna access points (APs) is considered over three different channel models: correlated Rician fading with fixed or random line-of-sight (LoS) phase-shifts, and correlated Rayleigh fading. With the aid of matrix inversion derivations, we can construct the conventional MMSE combining from the perspective of each AP, where global instantaneous information is involved. Then, for an arbitrary AP, we apply the statistics approximation methodology to approximate instantaneous terms related to other APs by channel statistics to construct the distributed combining scheme at each AP with local instantaneous information and global statistics. With the aid of uplink-downlink duality, we derive the respective GSLI-MMSE precoding schemes. Numerical results showcase that the proposed GSLI-MMSE scheme demonstrates performance comparable to the optimal centralized MMSE scheme, under the stable LoS conditions, e.g., with static users having Rician fading with a fixed LoS path.

Training-Free Self-Correction for Multimodal Masked Diffusion Models

Masked diffusion models have emerged as a powerful framework for text and multimodal generation. However, their sampling procedure updates multiple tokens simultaneously and treats generated tokens as immutable, which may lead to error accumulation when early mistakes cannot be revised. In this work, we revisit existing self-correction methods and identify limitations stemming from additional training requirements or reliance on misaligned likelihood estimates. We propose a training-free self-correction framework that exploits the inductive biases of pre-trained masked diffusion models. Without modifying model parameters or introducing auxiliary evaluators, our method significantly improves generation quality on text-to-image generation and multimodal understanding tasks with reduced sampling steps. Moreover, the proposed framework generalizes across different masked diffusion architectures, highlighting its robustness and practical applicability. Code can be found in https://github.com/huge123/FreeCorrection.

Bridging the Gap Between Estimated and True Regret Towards Reliable Regret Estimation in Deep Learning based Mechanism Design

Recent advances, such as RegretNet, ALGnet, RegretFormer and CITransNet, use deep learning to approximate optimal multi item auctions by relaxing incentive compatibility (IC) and measuring its violation via ex post regret. However, the true accuracy of these regret estimates remains unclear. Computing exact regret is computationally intractable, and current models rely on gradient based optimizers whose outcomes depend heavily on hyperparameter choices. Through extensive experiments, we reveal that existing methods systematically underestimate actual regret (In some models, the true regret is several hundred times larger than the reported regret), leading to overstated claims of IC and revenue. To address this issue, we derive a lower bound on regret and introduce an efficient item wise regret approximation. Building on this, we propose a guided refinement procedure that substantially improves regret estimation accuracy while reducing computational cost. Our method provides a more reliable foundation for evaluating incentive compatibility in deep learning based auction mechanisms and highlights the need to reassess prior performance claims in this area.

HyFormer: Revisiting the Roles of Sequence Modeling and Feature Interaction in CTR Prediction

Industrial large-scale recommendation models (LRMs) face the challenge of jointly modeling long-range user behavior sequences and heterogeneous non-sequential features under strict efficiency constraints. However, most existing architectures employ a decoupled pipeline: long sequences are first compressed with a query-token based sequence compressor like LONGER, followed by fusion with dense features through token-mixing modules like RankMixer, which thereby limits both the representation capacity and the interaction flexibility. This paper presents HyFormer, a unified hybrid transformer architecture that tightly integrates long-sequence modeling and feature interaction into a single backbone. From the perspective of sequence modeling, we revisit and redesign query tokens in LRMs, and frame the LRM modeling task as an alternating optimization process that integrates two core components: Query Decoding which expands non-sequential features into Global Tokens and performs long sequence decoding over layer-wise key-value representations of long behavioral sequences; and Query Boosting which enhances cross-query and cross-sequence heterogeneous interactions via efficient token mixing. The two complementary mechanisms are performed iteratively to refine semantic representations across layers. Extensive experiments on billion-scale industrial datasets demonstrate that HyFormer consistently outperforms strong LONGER and RankMixer baselines under comparable parameter and FLOPs budgets, while exhibiting superior scaling behavior with increasing parameters and FLOPs. Large-scale online A/B tests in high-traffic production systems further validate its effectiveness, showing significant gains over deployed state-of-the-art models. These results highlight the practicality and scalability of HyFormer as a unified modeling framework for industrial LRMs.

EmoLat: Text-driven Image Sentiment Transfer via Emotion Latent Space

We propose EmoLat, a novel emotion latent space that enables fine-grained, text-driven image sentiment transfer by modeling cross-modal correlations between textual semantics and visual emotion features. Within EmoLat, an emotion semantic graph is constructed to capture the relational structure among emotions, objects, and visual attributes. To enhance the discriminability and transferability of emotion representations, we employ adversarial regularization, aligning the latent emotion distributions across modalities. Building upon EmoLat, a cross-modal sentiment transfer framework is proposed to manipulate image sentiment via joint embedding of text and EmoLat features. The network is optimized using a multi-objective loss incorporating semantic consistency, emotion alignment, and adversarial regularization. To support effective modeling, we construct EmoSpace Set, a large-scale benchmark dataset comprising images with dense annotations on emotions, object semantics, and visual attributes. Extensive experiments on EmoSpace Set demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in both quantitative metrics and qualitative transfer fidelity, establishing a new paradigm for controllable image sentiment editing guided by textual input. The EmoSpace Set and all the code are available at http://github.com/JingVIPLab/EmoLat.

Bridging Semantic Understanding and Popularity Bias with LLMs

Semantic understanding of popularity bias is a crucial yet underexplored challenge in recommender systems, where popular items are often favored at the expense of niche content. Most existing debiasing methods treat the semantic understanding of popularity bias as a matter of diversity enhancement or long-tail coverage, neglecting the deeper semantic layer that embodies the causal origins of the bias itself. Consequently, such shallow interpretations limit both their debiasing effectiveness and recommendation accuracy. In this paper, we propose FairLRM, a novel framework that bridges the gap in the semantic understanding of popularity bias with Recommendation via Large Language Model (RecLLM). FairLRM decomposes popularity bias into item-side and user-side components, using structured instruction-based prompts to enhance the model's comprehension of both global item distributions and individual user preferences. Unlike traditional methods that rely on surface-level features such as "diversity" or "debiasing", FairLRM improves the model's ability to semantically interpret and address the underlying bias. Through empirical evaluation, we show that FairLRM significantly enhances both fairness and recommendation accuracy, providing a more semantically aware and trustworthy approach to enhance the semantic understanding of popularity bias. The implementation is available at https://github.com/LuoRenqiang/FairLRM.

RovoDev Code Reviewer: A Large-Scale Online Evaluation of LLM-based Code Review Automation at Atlassian

Large Language Models (LLMs)-powered code review automation has the potential to transform code review workflows. Despite the advances of LLM-powered code review comment generation approaches, several practical challenges remain for designing enterprise-grade code review automation tools. In particular, this paper aims at answering the practical question: how can we design a review-guided, context-aware, quality-checked code review comment generation without fine-tuning? In this paper, we present RovoDev Code Reviewer, an enterprise-grade LLM-based code review automation tool designed and deployed at scale within Atlassian's development ecosystem with seamless integration into Atlassian's Bitbucket. Through the offline, online, user feedback evaluations over a one-year period, we conclude that RovoDev Code Reviewer is (1) effective in generating code review comments that could lead to code resolution for 38.70% (i.e., comments that triggered code changes in the subsequent commits); and (2) offers the promise of accelerating feedback cycles (i.e., decreasing the PR cycle time by 30.8%), alleviating reviewer workload (i.e., reducing the number of human-written comments by 35.6%), and improving overall software quality (i.e., finding errors with actionable suggestions).

PathFound: An Agentic Multimodal Model Activating Evidence-seeking Pathological Diagnosis

Recent pathological foundation models have substantially advanced visual representation learning and multimodal interaction. However, most models still rely on a static inference paradigm in which whole-slide images are processed once to produce predictions, without reassessment or targeted evidence acquisition under ambiguous diagnoses. This contrasts with clinical diagnostic workflows that refine hypotheses through repeated slide observations and further examination requests. We propose PathFound, an agentic multimodal model designed to support evidence-seeking inference in pathological diagnosis. PathFound integrates the power of pathological visual foundation models, vision-language models, and reasoning models trained with reinforcement learning to perform proactive information acquisition and diagnosis refinement by progressing through the initial diagnosis, evidence-seeking, and final decision stages. Across several large multimodal models, adopting this strategy consistently improves diagnostic accuracy, indicating the effectiveness of evidence-seeking workflows in computational pathology. Among these models, PathFound achieves state-of-the-art diagnostic performance across diverse clinical scenarios and demonstrates strong potential to discover subtle details, such as nuclear features and local invasions.

AirGS: Real-Time 4D Gaussian Streaming for Free-Viewpoint Video Experiences

Free-viewpoint video (FVV) enables immersive viewing experiences by allowing users to view scenes from arbitrary perspectives. As a prominent reconstruction technique for FVV generation, 4D Gaussian Splatting (4DGS) models dynamic scenes with time-varying 3D Gaussian ellipsoids and achieves high-quality rendering via fast rasterization. However, existing 4DGS approaches suffer from quality degradation over long sequences and impose substantial bandwidth and storage overhead, limiting their applicability in real-time and wide-scale deployments. Therefore, we present AirGS, a streaming-optimized 4DGS framework that rearchitects the training and delivery pipeline to enable high-quality, low-latency FVV experiences. AirGS converts Gaussian video streams into multi-channel 2D formats and intelligently identifies keyframes to enhance frame reconstruction quality. It further combines temporal coherence with inflation loss to reduce training time and representation size. To support communication-efficient transmission, AirGS models 4DGS delivery as an integer linear programming problem and design a lightweight pruning level selection algorithm to adaptively prune the Gaussian updates to be transmitted, balancing reconstruction quality and bandwidth consumption. Extensive experiments demonstrate that AirGS reduces quality deviation in PSNR by more than 20% when scene changes, maintains frame-level PSNR consistently above 30, accelerates training by 6 times, reduces per-frame transmission size by nearly 50% compared to the SOTA 4DGS approaches.