ORGAN: Object-Centric Representation Learning using Cycle Consistent Generative Adversarial Networks

Although data generation is often straightforward, extracting information from data is more difficult. Object-centric representation learning can extract information from images in an unsupervised manner. It does so by segmenting an image into its subcomponents: the objects. Each object is then represented in a low-dimensional latent space that can be used for downstream processing. Object-centric representation learning is dominated by autoencoder architectures (AEs). Here, we present ORGAN, a novel approach for object-centric representation learning, which is based on cycle-consistent Generative Adversarial Networks instead. We show that it performs similarly to other state-of-the-art approaches on synthetic datasets, while at the same time being the only approach tested here capable of handling more challenging real-world datasets with many objects and low visual contrast. Complementing these results, ORGAN creates expressive latent space representations that allow for object manipulation. Finally, we show that ORGAN scales well both with respect to the number of objects and the size of the images, giving it a unique edge over current state-of-the-art approaches.

Visual-Informed Speech Enhancement Using Attention-Based Beamforming

Recent studies have demonstrated that incorporating auxiliary information, such as speaker voiceprint or visual cues, can substantially improve Speech Enhancement (SE) performance. However, single-channel methods often yield suboptimal results in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions, when there is high reverberation, or in complex scenarios involving dynamic speakers, overlapping speech, or non-stationary noise. To address these issues, we propose a novel Visual-Informed Neural Beamforming Network (VI-NBFNet), which integrates microphone array signal processing and deep neural networks (DNNs) using multimodal input features. The proposed network leverages a pretrained visual speech recognition model to extract lip movements as input features, which serve for voice activity detection (VAD) and target speaker identification. The system is intended to handle both static and moving speakers by introducing a supervised end-to-end beamforming framework equipped with an attention mechanism. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed audiovisual system has achieved better SE performance and robustness for both stationary and dynamic speaker scenarios, compared to several baseline methods.

X-RAY: Mapping LLM Reasoning Capability via Formalized and Calibrated Probes

Large language models (LLMs) achieve promising performance, yet their ability to reason remains poorly understood. Existing evaluations largely emphasize task-level accuracy, often conflating pattern matching with reasoning capability. We present X-RAY, an explainable reasoning analysis system that maps the LLM reasoning capability using calibrated, formally verified probes. We model reasoning capability as a function of extractable \textit{structure}, operationalized through formal properties such as constraint interaction, reasoning depth, and solution-space geometry. X-Ray generates probes via formal tools with controlled structural variations, enabling precise isolation of incremental structural information through formal calibration and verification. We evaluate state-of-the-art LLMs on problems ranging from junior-level to advanced in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Our analysis reveals a systematic asymmetry in LLM reasoning: models are relatively robust to constraint refinement, where additional conditions shrink an existing solution space, but degrade sharply under solution-space restructuring, where modifications alter the underlying structural form of the solution manifold. Moreover, calibrated formal probes differentiate models that appear indistinguishable on standard benchmarks and reveal failure modes that are structurally interpretable rather than opaque. Beyond evaluation, our framework is contamination-free and supports the training and testing of reasoning models.

CLIP-driven Zero-shot Learning with Ambiguous Labels

Zero-shot learning (ZSL) aims to recognize unseen classes by leveraging semantic information from seen classes, but most existing methods assume accurate class labels for training instances. However, in real-world scenarios, noise and ambiguous labels can significantly reduce the performance of ZSL. To address this, we propose a new CLIP-driven partial label zero-shot learning (CLIP-PZSL) framework to handle label ambiguity. First, we use CLIP to extract instance and label features. Then, a semantic mining block fuses these features to extract discriminative label embeddings. We also introduce a partial zero-shot loss, which assigns weights to candidate labels based on their relevance to the instance and aligns instance and label embeddings to minimize semantic mismatch. As the training goes on, the ground-truth labels are progressively identified, and the refined labels and label embeddings in turn help improve the semantic alignment of instance and label features. Comprehensive experiments on several datasets demonstrate the advantage of CLIP-PZSL.

Interpretable Pre-Release Baseball Pitch Type Anticipation from Broadcast 3D Kinematics

How much can a pitcher's body reveal about the upcoming pitch? We study this question at scale by classifying eight pitch types from monocular 3D pose sequences, without access to ball-flight data. Our pipeline chains a diffusion-based 3D pose backbone with automatic pitching-event detection, groundtruth-validated biomechanical feature extraction, and gradient-boosted classification over 229 kinematic features. Evaluated on 119,561 professional pitches, the largest such benchmark to date, we achieve 80.4\% accuracy using body kinematics alone. A systematic importance analysis reveals that upper-body mechanics contribute 64.9\% of the predictive signal versus 35.1\% for the lower body, with wrist position (14.8\%) and trunk lateral tilt emerging as the most informative joint group and biomechanical feature, respectively. We further show that grip-defined variants (four-seam vs.\ two-seam fastball) are not separable from pose, establishing an empirical ceiling near 80\% and delineating where kinematic information ends and ball-flight information begins.

MUTEX: Leveraging Multilingual Transformers and Conditional Random Fields for Enhanced Urdu Toxic Span Detection

Urdu toxic span detection remains limited because most existing systems rely on sentence-level classification and fail to identify the specific toxic spans within those text. It is further exacerbated by the multiple factors i.e. lack of token-level annotated resources, linguistic complexity of Urdu, frequent code-switching, informal expressions, and rich morphological variations. In this research, we propose MUTEX: a multilingual transformer combined with conditional random fields (CRF) for Urdu toxic span detection framework that uses manually annotated token-level toxic span dataset to improve performance and interpretability. MUTEX uses XLM RoBERTa with CRF layer to perform sequence labeling and is tested on multi-domain data extracted from social media, online news, and YouTube reviews using token-level F1 to evaluate fine-grained span detection. The results indicate that MUTEX achieves 60% token-level F1 score that is the first supervised baseline for Urdu toxic span detection. Further examination reveals that transformer-based models are more effective at implicitly capturing the contextual toxicity and are able to address the issues of code-switching and morphological variation than other models.

Guaranteed Image Classification via Goal-oriented Joint Semantic Source and Channel Coding

To enable critical applications such as remote diagnostics, image classification must be guaranteed under bandwidth constraints and unreliable wireless channels through joint source and channel coding (JSCC) design. However, most existing JSCC methods focus on minimizing image distortion, implicitly assuming that all image regions contribute equally to classification performance, thereby overlooking their varying importance for the task. In this paper, we propose a goal-oriented joint semantic source and channel coding (G-JSSCC) framework that applies \emph{various} levels of source coding compression and channel coding protection across image regions based on their semantic importance. Specifically, we design a semantic information extraction method that identifies and ranks various image regions based on their contributions to classification, where the contribution is measured by the shapely value from explainable artificial intelligence (AI). Based on that, we design a semantic source coding and a semantic channel coding method, which allocates higher-quality compression and stronger error protection to image regions of great semantic importance. In addition, we define a new metric, termed coding efficiency, to evaluate the effectiveness of the source and channel coding in the classification task. Simulations show that our proposed G-JSSCC framework improves classification probability by 2.70 times, reduces transmission cost by 38%, and enhances coding efficiency by 5.91 times, compared to the benchmark scheme using uniform compression and an idealized channel code to uniformly protect the whole image.

Harmonic Beltrami Signature Network: a Shape Prior Module in Deep Learning Framework

This paper presents the Harmonic Beltrami Signature Network (HBSN), a novel deep learning architecture for computing the Harmonic Beltrami Signature (HBS) from binary-like images. HBS is a shape representation that provides a one-to-one correspondence with 2D simply connected shapes, with invariance to translation, scaling, and rotation. By exploiting the function approximation capacity of neural networks, HBSN enables efficient extraction and utilization of shape prior information. The proposed network architecture incorporates a pre-Spatial Transformer Network (pre-STN) for shape normalization, a UNet-based backbone for HBS prediction, and a post-STN for angle regularization. Experiments show that HBSN accurately computes HBS representations, even for complex shapes. Furthermore, we demonstrate how HBSN can be directly incorporated into existing deep learning segmentation models, improving their performance through the use of shape priors. The results confirm the utility of HBSN as a general-purpose module for embedding geometric shape information into computer vision pipelines.

A Late-Fusion Multimodal AI Framework for Privacy-Preserving Deduplication in National Healthcare Data Environments

Duplicate records pose significant challenges in customer relationship management (CRM)and healthcare, often leading to inaccuracies in analytics, impaired user experiences, and compliance risks. Traditional deduplication methods rely heavily on direct identifiers such as names, emails, or Social Security Numbers (SSNs), making them ineffective under strict privacy regulations like GDPR and HIPAA, where such personally identifiable information (PII) is restricted or masked. In this research, I propose a novel, scalable, multimodal AI framework for detecting duplicates without depending on sensitive information. This system leverages three distinct modalities: semantic embeddings derived from textual fields (names, cities) using pre-trained DistilBERT models, behavioral patterns extracted from user login timestamps, and device metadata encoded through categorical embeddings. These heterogeneous modalities are combined using a late fusion approach and clustered via DBSCAN, an unsupervised density-based algorithm. This proposed model is evaluated against a traditional string-matching baseline on a synthetic CRM dataset specifically designed to reflect privacy-preserving constraints. The multimodal framework demonstrated good performance, achieving a good F1-score by effectively identifying duplicates despite variations and noise inherent in the data. This approach offers a privacy-compliant solution to entity resolution and supports secure digital infrastructure, enhances the reliability of public health analytics, and promotes ethical AI adoption across government and enterprise settings. It is well-suited for integration into national health data modernization efforts, aligning with broader goals of privacy-first innovation.

Step-Level Sparse Autoencoder for Reasoning Process Interpretation

Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved strong complex reasoning capabilities through Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning. However, their reasoning patterns remain too complicated to analyze. While Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) have emerged as a powerful tool for interpretability, existing approaches predominantly operate at the token level, creating a granularity mismatch when capturing more critical step-level information, such as reasoning direction and semantic transitions. In this work, we propose step-level sparse autoencoder (SSAE), which serves as an analytical tool to disentangle different aspects of LLMs' reasoning steps into sparse features. Specifically, by precisely controlling the sparsity of a step feature conditioned on its context, we form an information bottleneck in step reconstruction, which splits incremental information from background information and disentangles it into several sparsely activated dimensions. Experiments on multiple base models and reasoning tasks show the effectiveness of the extracted features. By linear probing, we can easily predict surface-level information, such as generation length and first token distribution, as well as more complicated properties, such as the correctness and logicality of the step. These observations indicate that LLMs should already at least partly know about these properties during generation, which provides the foundation for the self-verification ability of LLMs. The code is available at https://github.com/Miaow-Lab/SSAE