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Cheng Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Cheng Zhang.

At least 217 records · Page 12Linked to original sources

Finding high posterior density phylogenies by systematically extending a directed acyclic graph

Bayesian phylogenetics typically estimates a posterior distribution, or aspects thereof, using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. These methods integrate over tree space by applying local rearrangements to move a tree through its space as a random walk. Previous work explored the possibility of replacing this random walk with a systematic search, but was quickly overwhelmed by the large number of probable trees in the posterior distribution. In this paper we develop methods to sidestep this problem using a recently introduced structure called the subsplit directed acyclic graph (sDAG). This structure can represent many trees at once, and local rearrangements of trees translate to methods of enlarging the sDAG. Here we propose two methods of introducing, ranking, and selecting local rearrangements on sDAGs to produce a collection of trees with high posterior density. One of these methods successfully recovers the set of high posterior density trees across a range of data sets. However, we find that a simpler strategy of aggregating trees into an sDAG in fact is computationally faster and returns a higher fraction of probable trees.

q-bio.PE↗

Ring-a-Pose: A Ring for Continuous Hand Pose Tracking

We present Ring-a-Pose, a single untethered ring that tracks continuous 3D hand poses. Located in the center of the hand, the ring emits an inaudible acoustic signal that each hand pose reflects differently. Ring-a-Pose imposes minimal obtrusions on the hand, unlike multi-ring or glove systems. It is not affected by the choice of clothing that may cover wrist-worn systems. In a series of three user studies with a total of 30 participants, we evaluate Ring-a-Pose's performance on pose tracking and micro-finger gesture recognition. Without collecting any training data from a user, Ring-a-Pose tracks continuous hand poses with a joint error of 14.1mm. The joint error decreases to 10.3mm for fine-tuned user-dependent models. Ring-a-Pose recognizes 7-class micro-gestures with a 90.60% and 99.27% accuracy for user-independent and user-dependent models, respectively. Furthermore, the ring exhibits promising performance when worn on any finger. Ring-a-Pose enables the future of smart rings to track and recognize hand poses using relatively low-power acoustic sensing.

cs.HC↗

WristSonic: Enabling Fine-grained Hand-Face Interactions on Smartwatches Using Active Acoustic Sensing

Hand-face interactions play a key role in many everyday tasks, providing insights into user habits, behaviors, intentions, and expressions. However, existing wearable sensing systems often struggle to track these interactions in daily settings due to their reliance on multiple sensors or privacy-sensitive, vision-based approaches. To address these challenges, we propose WristSonic, a wrist-worn active acoustic sensing system that uses speakers and microphones to capture ultrasonic reflections from hand, arm, and face movements, enabling fine-grained detection of hand-face interactions with minimal intrusion. By transmitting and analyzing ultrasonic waves, WristSonic distinguishes a wide range of gestures, such as tapping the temple, brushing teeth, and nodding, using a Transformer-based neural network architecture. This approach achieves robust recognition of 21 distinct actions with a single, low-power, privacy-conscious wearable. Through two user studies with 15 participants in controlled and semi-in-the-wild settings, WristSonic demonstrates high efficacy, achieving macro F1-scores of 93.08% and 82.65%, respectively.

cs.HC↗

Visual Data Diagnosis and Debiasing with Concept Graphs

The widespread success of deep learning models today is owed to the curation of extensive datasets significant in size and complexity. However, such models frequently pick up inherent biases in the data during the training process, leading to unreliable predictions. Diagnosing and debiasing datasets is thus a necessity to ensure reliable model performance. In this paper, we present ConBias, a novel framework for diagnosing and mitigating Concept co-occurrence Biases in visual datasets. ConBias represents visual datasets as knowledge graphs of concepts, enabling meticulous analysis of spurious concept co-occurrences to uncover concept imbalances across the whole dataset. Moreover, we show that by employing a novel clique-based concept balancing strategy, we can mitigate these imbalances, leading to enhanced performance on downstream tasks. Extensive experiments show that data augmentation based on a balanced concept distribution augmented by Conbias improves generalization performance across multiple datasets compared to state-of-the-art methods.

cs.CV↗

An Analysis of Deep Learning Parameterizations for Ocean Subgrid Eddy Forcing

Due to computational constraints, climate simulations cannot resolve a range of small-scale physical processes, which have a significant impact on the large-scale evolution of the climate system. Parameterization is an approach to capture the effect of these processes, without resolving them explicitly. In recent years, data-driven parameterizations based on convolutional neural networks have obtained promising results. In this work, we provide an in-depth analysis of these parameterizations developed using data from ocean simulations. The parametrizations account for the effect of mesoscale eddies toward improving simulations of momentum, heat, and mass exchange in the ocean. Our results provide several insights into the properties of data-driven parameterizations based on neural networks. First, their performance can be substantially improved by increasing the geographic extent of the training data. Second, they learn nonlinear structure, since they are able to outperform a linear baseline. Third, they generalize robustly across different CO2 forcings, but not necessarily across different ocean depths. Fourth, they exploit a relatively small region of their input to generate their output. Our results will guide the further development of ocean mesoscale eddy parameterizations, and multiscale modeling more generally.

physics.ao-ph↗

Lyapunov-guided Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Delay-Sensitive Wireless Scheduling

In this paper, a two-stage intelligent scheduler is proposed to minimize the packet-level delay jitter while guaranteeing delay bound. Firstly, Lyapunov technology is employed to transform the delay-violation constraint into a sequential slot-level queue stability problem. Secondly, a hierarchical scheme is proposed to solve the resource allocation between multiple base stations and users, where the multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) gives the user priority and the number of scheduled packets, while the underlying scheduler allocates the resource. Our proposed scheme achieves lower delay jitter and delay violation rate than the Round-Robin Earliest Deadline First algorithm and MARL with delay violation penalty.

cs.IT↗

Addressing out-of-sample issues in multi-layer convolutional neural-network parameterization of mesoscale eddies applied near coastlines

This study addresses the boundary artifacts in machine-learned (ML) parameterizations for ocean subgrid mesoscale momentum forcing, as identified in the online ML implementation from a previous study (Zhang et al., 2023). We focus on the boundary condition (BC) treatment within the existing convolutional neural network (CNN) models and aim to mitigate the "out-of-sample" errors observed near complex coastal regions without developing new, complex network architectures. Our approach leverages two established strategies for placing BCs in CNN models, namely zero and replicate padding. Offline evaluations revealed that these padding strategies significantly reduce root mean squared error (RMSE) in coastal regions by limiting the dependence on random initialization of weights and restricting the range of out-of-sample predictions. Further online evaluations suggest that replicate padding consistently reduces boundary artifacts across various retrained CNN models. In contrast, zero padding sometimes intensifies artifacts in certain retrained models despite both strategies performing similarly in offline evaluations. This study underscores the need for BC treatments in CNN models trained on open water data when predicting near-coastal subgrid forces in ML parameterizations. The application of replicate padding, in particular, offers a robust strategy to minimize the propagation of extreme values that can contaminate computational models or cause simulations to fail. Our findings provide insights for enhancing the accuracy and stability of ML parameterizations in the online implementation of ocean circulation models with coastlines.

physics.geo-ph↗

Functional Gradient Flows for Constrained Sampling

Recently, through a unified gradient flow perspective of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and variational inference (VI), particle-based variational inference methods (ParVIs) have been proposed that tend to combine the best of both worlds. While typical ParVIs such as Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) approximate the gradient flow within a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), many attempts have been made recently to replace RKHS with more expressive function spaces, such as neural networks. While successful, these methods are mainly designed for sampling from unconstrained domains. In this paper, we offer a general solution to constrained sampling by introducing a boundary condition for the gradient flow which would confine the particles within the specific domain. This allows us to propose a new functional gradient ParVI method for constrained sampling, called constrained functional gradient flow (CFG), with provable continuous-time convergence in total variation (TV). We also present novel numerical strategies to handle the boundary integral term arising from the domain constraints. Our theory and experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

stat.ML↗

SonicID: User Identification on Smart Glasses with Acoustic Sensing

Smart glasses have become more prevalent as they provide an increasing number of applications for users. They store various types of private information or can access it via connections established with other devices. Therefore, there is a growing need for user identification on smart glasses. In this paper, we introduce a low-power and minimally-obtrusive system called SonicID, designed to authenticate users on glasses. SonicID extracts unique biometric information from users by scanning their faces with ultrasonic waves and utilizes this information to distinguish between different users, powered by a customized binary classifier with the ResNet-18 architecture. SonicID can authenticate users by scanning their face for 0.06 seconds. A user study involving 40 participants confirms that SonicID achieves a true positive rate of 97.4%, a false positive rate of 4.3%, and a balanced accuracy of 96.6% using just 1 minute of training data collected for each new user. This performance is relatively consistent across different remounting sessions and days. Given this promising performance, we further discuss the potential applications of SonicID and methods to improve its performance in the future.

cs.HC↗

Over-the-Air Federated Learning in Cell-Free MIMO with Long-term Power Constraint

Wireless networks supporting artificial intelligence have gained significant attention, with Over-the-Air Federated Learning emerging as a key application due to its unique transmission and distributed computing characteristics. This paper derives error bounds for Over-the-Air Federated Learning in a Cell-free MIMO system and formulates an optimization problem to minimize optimality gap via joint optimization of power control and beamforming. We introduce the MOP-LOFPC algorithm, which employs Lyapunov optimization to decouple long-term constraints across rounds while requiring only causal channel state information. Experimental results demonstrate that MOP-LOFPC achieves a better and more flexible trade-off between the model's training loss and adherence to long-term power constraints compared to existing baselines.

cs.LG↗

Divergent Evolution of Slip Banding in Alloys

Metallic materials under high stress often exhibit deformation localization, manifesting as slip banding. Over seven decades ago, Frank and Read introduced the well-known model of dislocation multiplication at a source, explaining slip band formation. Here, we reveal two distinct types of slip bands (confined and extended) in alloys through multi-scale testing and modeling from microscopic to atomic scales. The confined slip band, characterized by a thin glide zone, arises from the conventional process of repetitive full dislocation emissions at Frank-Read source. Contrary to the classical model, the extended band stems from slip-induced deactivation of dislocation sources, followed by consequent generation of new sources on adjacent planes, leading to rapid band thickening. Our findings provide critical insights into atomic-scale collective dislocation motion and microscopic deformation instability in advanced structural materials, marking a pivotal advancement in our fundamental understanding of deformation dynamics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

A stable implementation of a data-driven scale-aware mesoscale parameterization

Ocean mesoscale eddies are often poorly represented in climate models, and therefore, their effects on the large scale circulation must be parameterized. Traditional parameterizations, which represent the bulk effect of the unresolved eddies, can be improved with new subgrid models learned directly from data. Zanna and Bolton 2020 (ZB20) applied an equation-discovery algorithm to reveal an interpretable expression parameterizing the subgrid momentum fluxes by mesoscale eddies through the components of the velocity-gradient tensor. In this work, we implement the ZB20 parameterization into the primitive-equation GFDL MOM6 ocean model and test it in two idealized configurations with significantly different dynamical regimes and topography. The original parameterization was found to generate excessive numerical noise near the grid scale. We propose two filtering approaches to avoid the numerical issues and additionally enhance the strength of large-scale energy backscatter. The filtered ZB20 parameterizations led to improved climatological mean state and energy distributions, compared to the current state-of-the-art energy backscatter parameterizations. The filtered ZB20 parameterizations are scale-aware and, consequently, can be used with a single value of the non-dimensional scaling coefficient for a range of resolutions. The successful application of the filtered ZB20 parameterizations to parameterize mesoscale eddies in two idealized configurations offers a promising opportunity to reduce long-standing biases in global ocean simulations in future studies.

physics.ao-ph↗

Diffusion-PINN Sampler

Recent success of diffusion models has inspired a surge of interest in developing sampling techniques using reverse diffusion processes. However, accurately estimating the drift term in the reverse stochastic differential equation (SDE) solely from the unnormalized target density poses significant challenges, hindering existing methods from achieving state-of-the-art performance. In this paper, we introduce the Diffusion-PINN Sampler (DPS), a novel diffusion-based sampling algorithm that estimates the drift term by solving the governing partial differential equation of the log-density of the underlying SDE marginals via physics-informed neural networks (PINN). We prove that the error of log-density approximation can be controlled by the PINN residual loss, enabling us to establish convergence guarantees of DPS. Experiments on a variety of sampling tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, particularly in accurately identifying mixing proportions when the target contains isolated components.

stat.ML↗

Jamming Detection and Channel Estimation for Spatially Correlated Beamspace Massive MIMO

In this paper, we investigate the problem of jamming detection and channel estimation during multi-user uplink beam training under random pilot jamming attacks in beamspace massive multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) systems. For jamming detection, we distinguish the signals from the jammer and the user by projecting the observation signals onto the pilot space. By using the multiple projected observation vectors corresponding to the unused pilots, we propose a jamming detection scheme based on the locally most powerful test (LMPT) for systems with general channel conditions. Analytical expressions for the probability of detection and false alarms are derived using the second-order statistics and likelihood functions of the projected observation vectors. For the detected jammer along with users, we propose a two-step minimum mean square error (MMSE) channel estimation using the projected observation vectors. As a part of the channel estimation, we develop schemes to estimate the norm and the phase of the inner-product of the legitimate pilot vector and the random jamming pilot vector, which can be obtained using linear MMSE estimation and a bilinear form of the multiple projected observation vectors. From simulations under different system parameters, we observe that the proposed technique improves the detection probability by 32.22% compared to the baseline at medium channel correlation level, and the channel estimation achieves a mean square error of -15.93dB.

eess.SP↗

Anti-jamming Transmission of Downlink Cell Free Millimeter-Wave MIMO System

In this letter, the maximization of resistible jamming power is studied for multi-user downlink millimeter-wave cell-free multiple-input-multiple-output (CF-MIMO) systems. We propose an alternate optimization-based anti-jamming hybrid beamforming (AO-AJHBF) scheme. For receiving beamforming, more practical prior about the jamming channel, i.e., second-order statistics rather than instantaneous information, is exploited via maximizing the generalized Rayleigh quotient. For transmitting beamforming, we use the max-min fairness principle and propose a low-complexity projected gradient ascent-based method to circumvent the excessive computation of semi-definite relaxation (SDR). Simulations verify the performance advantage of proposed AO-AJHBF over schemes based on weighted minimum mean square error and SDR methods.

eess.SP↗

EVALALIGN: Supervised Fine-Tuning Multimodal LLMs with Human-Aligned Data for Evaluating Text-to-Image Models

The recent advancements in text-to-image generative models have been remarkable. Yet, the field suffers from a lack of evaluation metrics that accurately reflect the performance of these models, particularly lacking fine-grained metrics that can guide the optimization of the models. In this paper, we propose EvalAlign, a metric characterized by its accuracy, stability, and fine granularity. Our approach leverages the capabilities of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) pre-trained on extensive data. We develop evaluation protocols that focus on two key dimensions: image faithfulness and text-image alignment. Each protocol comprises a set of detailed, fine-grained instructions linked to specific scoring options, enabling precise manual scoring of the generated images. We supervised fine-tune (SFT) the MLLM to align with human evaluative judgments, resulting in a robust evaluation model. Our evaluation across 24 text-to-image generation models demonstrate that EvalAlign not only provides superior metric stability but also aligns more closely with human preferences than existing metrics, confirming its effectiveness and utility in model assessment.

cs.CV↗

FabricDiffusion: High-Fidelity Texture Transfer for 3D Garments Generation from In-The-Wild Clothing Images

We introduce FabricDiffusion, a method for transferring fabric textures from a single clothing image to 3D garments of arbitrary shapes. Existing approaches typically synthesize textures on the garment surface through 2D-to-3D texture mapping or depth-aware inpainting via generative models. Unfortunately, these methods often struggle to capture and preserve texture details, particularly due to challenging occlusions, distortions, or poses in the input image. Inspired by the observation that in the fashion industry, most garments are constructed by stitching sewing patterns with flat, repeatable textures, we cast the task of clothing texture transfer as extracting distortion-free, tileable texture materials that are subsequently mapped onto the UV space of the garment. Building upon this insight, we train a denoising diffusion model with a large-scale synthetic dataset to rectify distortions in the input texture image. This process yields a flat texture map that enables a tight coupling with existing Physically-Based Rendering (PBR) material generation pipelines, allowing for realistic relighting of the garment under various lighting conditions. We show that FabricDiffusion can transfer various features from a single clothing image including texture patterns, material properties, and detailed prints and logos. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our model significantly outperforms state-to-the-art methods on both synthetic data and real-world, in-the-wild clothing images while generalizing to unseen textures and garment shapes.

cs.CV↗

Individually Addressable Nanoscale OLEDs

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), require miniaturized displays with ultrahigh pixel densities. Here, we demonstrate an individually addressable subwavelength OLED pixel based on a nanoscale electrode capable of supporting plasmonic modes. Our approach is based on the notion that when scaling down pixel size, the 2D planar geometry of conventional organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) evolves into a significantly more complex 3D geometry governed by sharp nanoelectrode contours. These cause (i) spatially imbalanced charge carrier transport and recombination, resulting in a low quantum efficiency, and (ii) filament growth, leading to rapid device failure. Here, we circumvent such effects by selectively covering sharp electrode contours with an insulating layer, while utilizing a nano-aperture in flat areas of the electrode. We thereby ensure controlled charge carrier injection and recombination at the nanoscale and suppress filament growth. As a proof of principle, we first demonstrate stable and efficient hole injection from Au nanoelectrodes in hole-only devices with above 90 % pixel yield and longtime operation stability and then a complete vertical OLED pixel with an individually addressable nanoelectrode (300 x 300 nm$^{2}$), highlighting the potential to further leverage plasmonic nanoantenna effects to enhance the performance and functionality of nano-OLEDs.

physics.optics↗