Yunhe Feng

Bingbing Wen, Yunhe Feng, Yongfeng Zhang et al.

As recommender systems become increasingly sophisticated and complex, they often suffer from lack of fairness and transparency. Providing robust and unbiased explanations for recommendations has been drawing more and more attention as it can help address these issues and improve trustworthiness and informativeness of recommender systems. However, despite the fact that such explanations are generated for humans who respond more strongly to messages with appropriate emotions, there is a lack of consideration for emotions when generating explanations for recommendations. Current explanation generation models are found to exaggerate certain emotions without accurately capturing the underlying tone or the meaning. In this paper, we propose a novel method based on a multi-head transformer, called Emotion-aware Transformer for Explainable Recommendation (EmoTER), to generate more robust, fair, and emotion-enhanced explanations. To measure the linguistic quality and emotion fairness of the generated explanations, we adopt both automatic text metrics and human perceptions for evaluation. Experiments on three widely-used benchmark datasets with multiple evaluation metrics demonstrate that EmoTER consistently outperforms the existing state-of-the-art explanation generation models in terms of text quality, explainability, and consideration for fairness to emotion distribution. Implementation of EmoTER will be released as an open-source toolkit to support further research.

Sumera Anjum, Hanzhi Zhang, Wenjun Zhou et al.

Large language models (LLMs) have significantly advanced natural language processing tasks, yet they are susceptible to generating inaccurate or unreliable responses, a phenomenon known as hallucination. In critical domains such as health and medicine, these hallucinations can pose serious risks. This paper introduces HALO, a novel framework designed to enhance the accuracy and reliability of medical question-answering (QA) systems by focusing on the detection and mitigation of hallucinations. Our approach generates multiple variations of a given query using LLMs and retrieves relevant information from external open knowledge bases to enrich the context. We utilize maximum marginal relevance scoring to prioritize the retrieved context, which is then provided to LLMs for answer generation, thereby reducing the risk of hallucinations. The integration of LangChain further streamlines this process, resulting in a notable and robust increase in the accuracy of both open-source and commercial LLMs, such as Llama-3.1 (from 44% to 65%) and ChatGPT (from 56% to 70%). This framework underscores the critical importance of addressing hallucinations in medical QA systems, ultimately improving clinical decision-making and patient care. The open-source HALO is available at: https://github.com/ResponsibleAILab/HALO.

Bing Fan, Yunhe Feng, Yapeng Tian et al.

Egocentric visual query localization (EgoVQL) focuses on localizing the target of interest in space and time from first-person videos, given a visual query. Despite recent progressive, existing methods often struggle to handle severe object appearance changes and cluttering background in the video due to lacking sufficient target cues, leading to degradation. Addressing this, we introduce PRVQL, a novel Progressive knowledge-guided Refinement framework for EgoVQL. The core is to continuously exploit target-relevant knowledge directly from videos and utilize it as guidance to refine both query and video features for improving target localization. Our PRVQL contains multiple processing stages. The target knowledge from one stage, comprising appearance and spatial knowledge extracted via two specially designed knowledge learning modules, are utilized as guidance to refine the query and videos features for the next stage, which are used to generate more accurate knowledge for further feature refinement. With such a progressive process, target knowledge in PRVQL can be gradually improved, which, in turn, leads to better refined query and video features for localization in the final stage. Compared to previous methods, our PRVQL, besides the given object cues, enjoys additional crucial target information from a video as guidance to refine features, and hence enhances EgoVQL in complicated scenes. In our experiments on challenging Ego4D, PRVQL achieves state-of-the-art result and largely surpasses other methods, showing its efficacy. Our code, model and results will be released at https://github.com/fb-reps/PRVQL.

Mingchen Li, Meikang Qiu, Zifan Peng et al.

Large language model (LLM)-assisted software security operates at a difficult boundary: the vulnerability-analysis terminology needed for legitimate code review, triage, and repair can closely resemble terminology associated with misuse. Existing safety and cybersecurity evaluations are difficult to interpret in this setting because they often compare unrelated model families, thereby conflating safety behavior with differences in architecture, scale, training data, and deployment. To isolate this factor, we study safety state: whether refusal behavior remains intact (Aligned) or has been refusal-ablated (Abliterated) within same-lineage models. We ask how this safety state affects defensive utility across software-security workflows. We compare aligned instruction-tuned models with publicly released refusal-ablated descendants from two model families, Gemma and Qwen. We evaluate Aligned and Abliterated states on vulnerability detection, CWE attribution, vulnerable-line localization, root-cause localization, and executable patch validation. We further treat prompt wording as a controlled framing dimension: prompts begin with neutral code-review language, add authorization context, and vary the density of cybersecurity terminology. In a Gemma-based Java/Vul4J repair-validation study, Abliterated achieves higher early-stage validation rates, with 67.8%, 65.0%, and 32.8% of patches judged usable, successfully applied, and successfully compiled, respectively, compared with 29.9%, 24.9%, and 9.0% for Aligned. In the Qwen pair, Abliterated improves localization performance, increasing line-level F1 from 2.08% to 3.91% and Top-1 accuracy from 4.10% to 6.95%. These findings suggest that evaluations of LLM-based security assistants should jointly measure whether models respond, whether their usable responses are correct, and whether their outputs remain actionable across the engineering workflow.

Xiaoqiong Liu, Yunhe Feng, Shu Hu et al.

The robustness of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) tracking is crucial in many tasks like surveillance and robotics. Despite its importance, little attention is paid to the performance of UAV trackers under common corruptions due to lack of a dedicated platform. Addressing this, we propose UAV-C, a large-scale benchmark for assessing robustness of UAV trackers under common corruptions. Specifically, UAV-C is built upon two popular UAV datasets by introducing 18 common corruptions from 4 representative categories including adversarial, sensor, blur, and composite corruptions in different levels. Finally, UAV-C contains more than 10K sequences. To understand the robustness of existing UAV trackers against corruptions, we extensively evaluate 12 representative algorithms on UAV-C. Our study reveals several key findings: 1) Current trackers are vulnerable to corruptions, indicating more attention needed in enhancing the robustness of UAV trackers; 2) When accompanying together, composite corruptions result in more severe degradation to trackers; and 3) While each tracker has its unique performance profile, some trackers may be more sensitive to specific corruptions. By releasing UAV-C, we hope it, along with comprehensive analysis, serves as a valuable resource for advancing the robustness of UAV tracking against corruption. Our UAV-C will be available at https://github.com/Xiaoqiong-Liu/UAV-C.

Kareem Shaik, Dali Wang, Weijian Zheng et al.

The understanding of large-scale scientific software poses significant challenges due to its diverse codebase, extensive code length, and target computing architectures. The emergence of generative AI, specifically large language models (LLMs), provides novel pathways for understanding such complex scientific codes. This paper presents S3LLM, an LLM-based framework designed to enable the examination of source code, code metadata, and summarized information in conjunction with textual technical reports in an interactive, conversational manner through a user-friendly interface. S3LLM leverages open-source LLaMA-2 models to enhance code analysis through the automatic transformation of natural language queries into domain-specific language (DSL) queries. Specifically, it translates these queries into Feature Query Language (FQL), enabling efficient scanning and parsing of entire code repositories. In addition, S3LLM is equipped to handle diverse metadata types, including DOT, SQL, and customized formats. Furthermore, S3LLM incorporates retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and LangChain technologies to directly query extensive documents. S3LLM demonstrates the potential of using locally deployed open-source LLMs for the rapid understanding of large-scale scientific computing software, eliminating the need for extensive coding expertise, and thereby making the process more efficient and effective. S3LLM is available at https://github.com/ResponsibleAILab/s3llm.

Sina Montazeri, Yunhe Feng, Kewei Sha

Open data repositories hold potential for evidence-based decision-making, yet are inaccessible to non-experts lacking expertise in dataset discovery, schema mapping, and statistical analysis. Large language models show promise for individual tasks, but end-to-end analytical workflows expose fundamental limitations: attention dilutes across growing contexts, specialized reasoning patterns interfere, and errors propagate undetected. We present PublicAgent, a multi-agent framework that addresses these limitations through decomposition into specialized agents for intent clarification, dataset discovery, analysis, and reporting. This architecture maintains focused attention within agent contexts and enables validation at each stage. Evaluation across five models and 50 queries derives five design principles for multi-agent LLM systems. First, specialization provides value independent of model strength--even the strongest model shows 97.5% agent win rates, with benefits orthogonal to model scale. Second, agents divide into universal (discovery, analysis) and conditional (report, intent) categories. Universal agents show consistent effectiveness (std dev 12.4%) while conditional agents vary by model (std dev 20.5%). Third, agents mitigate distinct failure modes--removing discovery or analysis causes catastrophic failures (243-280 instances), while removing report or intent causes quality degradation. Fourth, architectural benefits persist across task complexity with stable win rates (86-92% analysis, 84-94% discovery), indicating workflow management value rather than reasoning enhancement. Fifth, wide variance in agent effectiveness across models (42-96% for analysis) requires model-aware architecture design. These principles guide when and why specialization is necessary for complex analytical workflows while enabling broader access to public data through natural language interfaces.

Pegah Ahadian, Yunhe Feng, Karl Kosko et al.

Mathematics education, a crucial and basic field, significantly influences students' learning in related subjects and their future careers. Utilizing artificial intelligence to interpret and comprehend math problems in education is not yet fully explored. This is due to the scarcity of quality datasets and the intricacies of processing handwritten information. In this paper, we present a novel contribution to the field of mathematics education through the development of MNIST-Fraction, a dataset inspired by the renowned MNIST, specifically tailored for the recognition and understanding of handwritten math fractions. Our approach is the utilization of deep learning, specifically Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), for the recognition and understanding of handwritten math fractions to effectively detect and analyze fractions, along with their numerators and denominators. This capability is pivotal in calculating the value of fractions, a fundamental aspect of math learning. The MNIST-Fraction dataset is designed to closely mimic real-world scenarios, providing a reliable and relevant resource for AI-driven educational tools. Furthermore, we conduct a comprehensive comparison of our dataset with the original MNIST dataset using various classifiers, demonstrating the effectiveness and versatility of MNIST-Fraction in both detection and classification tasks. This comparative analysis not only validates the practical utility of our dataset but also offers insights into its potential applications in math education. To foster collaboration and further research within the computational and educational communities. Our work aims to bridge the gap in high-quality educational resources for math learning, offering a valuable tool for both educators and researchers in the field.

Sina Montazeri, Waltenegus Dargie, Yunhe Feng et al.

Human activity recognition is critical for applications such as early intervention and health analytics. Traditional activity recognition relies on inertial measurement units (IMUs), which are resource intensive and require calibration. Although electrocardiogram (ECG)-based methods have been explored, these have typically served as supplements to IMUs or have been limited to broad categorical classification such as fall detection or active vs. inactive in daily activities. In this paper, we advance the field by demonstrating, for the first time, robust recognition of activity only with ECG in six distinct activities, which is beyond the scope of previous work. We design and evaluate three new deep learning models, including a CNN classifier with Squeeze-and-Excitation blocks for channel-wise feature recalibration, a ResNet classifier with dilated convolutions for multiscale temporal dependency capture, and a novel CNNTransformer hybrid combining convolutional feature extraction with attention mechanisms for long-range temporal relationship modeling. Tested on data from 54 subjects for six activities, all three models achieve over 94% accuracy for seen subjects, while CNNTransformer hybrid reaching the best accuracy of 72% for unseen subjects, a result that can be further improved by increasing the training population. This study demonstrates the first successful ECG-only activity classification in multiple physical activities, offering significant potential for developing next-generation wearables capable of simultaneous cardiac monitoring and activity recognition without additional motion sensors.

Sian Jin, Chengming Zhang, Xintong Jiang et al.

Training wide and deep neural networks (DNNs) require large amounts of storage resources such as memory because the intermediate activation data must be saved in the memory during forward propagation and then restored for backward propagation. However, state-of-the-art accelerators such as GPUs are only equipped with very limited memory capacities due to hardware design constraints, which significantly limits the maximum batch size and hence performance speedup when training large-scale DNNs. Traditional memory saving techniques either suffer from performance overhead or are constrained by limited interconnect bandwidth or specific interconnect technology. In this paper, we propose a novel memory-efficient CNN training framework (called COMET) that leverages error-bounded lossy compression to significantly reduce the memory requirement for training, to allow training larger models or to accelerate training. Different from the state-of-the-art solutions that adopt image-based lossy compressors (such as JPEG) to compress the activation data, our framework purposely adopts error-bounded lossy compression with a strict error-controlling mechanism. Specifically, we perform a theoretical analysis on the compression error propagation from the altered activation data to the gradients, and empirically investigate the impact of altered gradients over the training process. Based on these analyses, we optimize the error-bounded lossy compression and propose an adaptive error-bound control scheme for activation data compression. We evaluate our design against state-of-the-art solutions with five widely-adopted CNNs and ImageNet dataset. Experiments demonstrate that our proposed framework can significantly reduce the training memory consumption by up to 13.5X over the baseline training and 1.8X over another state-of-the-art compression-based framework, respectively, with little or no accuracy loss.

Yunhe Feng, Wenjun Zhou

Sellers of crop seeds need to plan for the variety and quantity of seeds to stock at least a year in advance. There are a large number of seed varieties of one crop, and each can perform best under different growing conditions. Given the unpredictability of weather, farmers need to make decisions that balance high yield and low risk. A seed vendor needs to be able to anticipate the needs of farmers and have them ready. In this study, we propose an analytical framework for estimating seed demand with three major steps. First, we will estimate the yield and risk of each variety as if they were planted at each location. Since past experiments performed with different seed varieties are highly unbalanced across varieties, and the combination of growing conditions is sparse, we employ multi-task learning to borrow information from similar varieties. Second, we will determine the best mix of seeds for each location by seeking a tradeoff between yield and risk. Third, we will aggregate such mix and pick the top five varieties to re-balance the yield and risk for each growing location. We find that multi-task learning provides a viable solution for yield prediction, and our overall analytical framework has resulted in a good performance.

Yunhe Feng, Daniel Saelid, Ke Li et al.

InfoSeeking Lab's FATE (Fairness Accountability Transparency Ethics) group at University of Washington participated in 2020 TREC Fairness Ranking Track. This report describes that track, assigned data and tasks, our group definitions, and our results. Our approach to bringing fairness in retrieval and re-ranking tasks with Semantic Scholar data was to extract various dimensions of author identity. These dimensions included gender and location. We developed modules for these extractions in a way that allowed us to plug them in for either of the tasks as needed. After trying different combinations of relative weights assigned to relevance, gender, and location information, we chose five runs for retrieval and five runs for re-ranking tasks. The results showed that our runs performed below par for re-ranking task, but above average for retrieval.