Abstract

RNA molecules play a significant role in many biological pathways and have diverse functional roles, which is a result of their structural flexibility to fold into diverse conformations. This structural flexibility makes it challenging to obtain the structures of RNAs experimentally. Deep learning can be used to predict the secondary structures of RNA and other properties such as the backbone torsion angles, to be used as restraints for the computational optimization of the tertiary structures of RNA. TorRNA is a transformer encoder-decoder model, that takes an input RNA sequence and predicts the (pseudo)torsion angles of each nucleotide with a pre-trained RNA-FM model as the encoder. TorRNA is able to achieve a performance boost of 2% − 16% over the previous (pseudo)torsion angle prediction method for RNAs. We also demonstrate that TorRNA can used as a tool for model quality assessment of candidate RNA structures

Abstract

In this study, we address the challenge of obstacle avoidance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) through an innovative composite imitation learning ap- proach that combines Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) with Behavior Cloning (BC) and Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning (GAIL), enriched by the integration of ray-tracing techniques. Our research underscores the sig- nificant role of ray-tracing in enhancing obstacle detection and avoidance capabilities. Moreover, we demonstrate the effectiveness of incorporating GAIL in coordinating the flight paths of two UAVs, showcasing improved collision avoidance capabilities. Extending our methodology, we apply our combined PPO, BC, GAIL, and ray-tracing framework to scenarios involving four UAVs, illustrating its scalability and adaptability to more complex scenarios. The findings indicate that our approach not only improves the reliability of basic PPO based obstacle avoidance but also paves the way for advanced autonomous UAV operations in crowded or dynamic environments.

Abstract

The paper presents a 0.5 V, ultra-low power current, and voltage reference circuit in a single block, giving reference values of 90.7 pA and 288 mV. The proposed block uses proper addition of CTAT and PTAT curves, resulting in an excellent temperature coefficient of 15.2 ppm/°C and 36.8 ppm/°C for compensated current and voltage values, respectively, at a nominal supply of 0.5 V for a wide temperature range of −55 °C to 100 °C. Usage of gate leakage transistors in place of resistors helps in reducing the power and area of the circuit to 0.087 mm2. The circuit is implemented in 90 nm technology and operates effectively across a wide voltage range of 0.5 V–2.6 V with a supply sensitivity of 0.028 %/V and 0.154 %/V for current and voltage reference, respectively. The entire circuit takes a power of 275.26 pW at nominal conditions.

Abstract

Understanding the structural organisation of 3D indoor scenes in terms of rooms is often accomplished via floorplan extraction. Robotic tasks such as planning and navigation require a semantic understanding of the scene as well. This is typically achieved via object-level semantic segmentation. However, such methods struggle to segment out topological regions like “kitchen” in the scene. In this work, we introduce a two-step pipeline. First, we extract a topological map, i.e., floorplan of the indoor scene using a novel multi-channel occupancy representation. Then, we generate CLIP-aligned features and semantic labels for every room instance based on the objects it contains using a self-attention transformer. Our language-topology alignment supports natural language querying, e.g. a “place to cook” locates the “kitchen”. We outperform the current state-of-the-art on room segmentation by ∼20% and room classification by ∼12%. Our detailed qualitative analysis and ablation studies provide insights into the problem of joint structural and semantic 3D scene understanding.

Abstract

Modern software systems are subjected to various types of uncertainties arising from context, environment, etc. To this end, self-adaptation techniques have been sought out as potential solutions. Although recent advances in self-adaptation through the use of ML techniques have demonstrated promising results, the capabilities are limited by constraints imposed by the ML techniques, such as the need for training samples, the ability to generalize, etc. Recent advancements in Generative AI (GenAI) open up new possibilities as it is trained on massive amounts of data, potentially enabling the interpretation of uncertainties and synthesis of adaptation strategies. In this context, this paper presents a vision for using GenAI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of architectural adaptation. Drawing parallels with human operators, we propose that LLMs can autonomously gen- erate similar, context-sensitive adaptation strategies through its advanced natural language processing capabilities. This method allows software systems to understand their operational state and implement adaptations that align with their architectural requirements and environmental changes. By integrating LLMs into the self-adaptive system architecture, we facilitate nuanced decision-making that mirrors human-like adaptive reasoning. A case study with the SWIM exemplar system provides promising results, indicating that LLMs can potentially handle different adaptation scenarios. Our findings suggest that GenAI has signifi- cant potential to improve software systems’ dynamic adaptability and resilience.

Abstract

In recent studies, the extensive utilization of large language models has underscored the im- portance of robust evaluation methodologies for assessing text generation quality and rel- evance to specific tasks. This has revealed a prevalent issue known as hallucination, an emergent condition in the model where gener- ated text lacks faithfulness to the source and deviates from the evaluation criteria. In this study, we formally define hallucination and pro- pose a framework for its quantitative detection in a zero-shot setting, leveraging our definition and the assumption that model outputs entail task and sample specific inputs. In detecting hallucinations, our solution achieves an accu- racy of 0.78 in a model-aware setting and 0.61 in a model-agnostic setting. Notably, our so- lution maintains computational efficiency, re- quiring far less computational resources than other SOTA approaches, aligning with the trend towards lightweight and compressed models.

Abstract

In today’s dynamic technological landscape, sustainability has emerged as a pivotal concern, especially with respect to architecting Machine Learning enabled Systems (MLS). Many ML models fail in transitioning to production, primarily hindered by uncertainties due to data variations, evolving requirements, and model instabilities. Machine Learning operations (MLOps) offers a promising solution by enhancing adaptability and technical sustainability in MLS. However, MLOps itself faces challenges related to environmental impact, technical maintenance, and economic concerns. Over the years, self-adaptation has emerged as a potential solution to handle uncertainties. This paper introduces a novel approach employing self-adaptive principles integrated into the MLOps architecture through a MAPE-K loop to bolster MLOps sustainability. By autonomously responding to uncertainties, including data, model dynamics, and environmental variations, our approach aims to address the sustainability concerns of a given MLOps pipeline identified by an architect at design time. Further, we implement the method for a Smart City use case to display the capabilities of our approach.

Abstract

Language models often exhibit undesirable behavior, e.g., generating toxic or gender-biased text. In the case of neural language models, an encoding of the undesirable behavior is often present in the model's representations. Thus, one natural (and common) approach to prevent the model from exhibiting undesirable behavior is to steer the model's representations in a manner that reduces the probability of it generating undesirable text. This paper investigates the formal and empirical properties of steering functions, i.e., transformation of the neural language model's representations that alter its behavior. First, we derive two optimal, in the least-squares sense, affine steering functions under different constraints. Our theory provides justification for existing approaches and offers a novel, improved steering approach. Second, we offer a series of experiments that demonstrate the empirical effectiveness of the methods in mitigating bias and reducing toxic generation.

Abstract

Named Entity Recognition (NER) is a use- ful component in Natural Language Process- ing (NLP) applications. It is used in various tasks such as Machine Translation, Summa- rization, Information Retrieval, and Question- Answering systems. The research on NER is centered around English and some other ma- jor languages, whereas limited attention has been given to Indian languages. We analyze the challenges and propose techniques that can be tailored for Multilingual Named Entity Recog- nition for Indian Languages. We present a hu- man annotated named entity corpora of ∼40K sentences for 4 Indian languages from two of the major Indian language families. Addition- ally,we present a multilingual model fine-tuned on our dataset, which achieves an F1 score of ∼0.80 on our dataset on average. We achieve comparable performance on completely unseen benchmark datasets for Indian languages which affirms the usability of our model.

Abstract

The neural mechanisms underlying the comprehension of meaningful sounds are yet to be fully understood. While previous research has shown that the auditory cortex can classify auditory stimuli into distinct semantic categories, the specific contributions of the primary (A1) and the secondary auditory cortex (A2) to this process are not well understood. We used songbirds as a model species, and analyzed their neural responses as they listened to their entire vocal repertoire ((sim )10 types of vocalizations). We first demonstrate that the distances between the call types in the neural representation spaces of A1 and A2 are correlated with their respective distances in the acoustic feature space. Then, we show that while the neural activity in both A1 and A2 is equally informative of the acoustic category of the vocalizations, A2 is significantly more informative of the semantic category of those vocalizations. Additionally, we show that the semantic categories are more separated in A2. These findings suggest that as the incoming signal moves downstream within the auditory cortex, its acoustic information is preserved, whereas its semantic information is enhanced.