arXiv subjects

Liang Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Liang Zhang.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

On the Crucial Role of Initialization for Matrix Factorization

This work revisits the classical low-rank matrix factorization problem and unveils the critical role of initialization in shaping convergence rates for such nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization. We introduce Nystrom initialization, which significantly improves the global convergence of Scaled Gradient Descent (ScaledGD) in both symmetric and asymmetric matrix factorization tasks. Specifically, we prove that ScaledGD with Nystrom initialization achieves quadratic convergence in cases where only linear rates were previously known. Furthermore, we extend this initialization to low-rank adapters (LoRA) commonly used for finetuning foundation models. Our approach, NoRA, i.e., LoRA with Nystrom initialization, demonstrates superior performance across various downstream tasks and model scales, from 1B to 7B parameters, in large language and diffusion models.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

The classification and formation rate of $\mathbf{Swift/BAT}$ gamma-ray bursts

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are usually classified into long/short categories according to their durations, but controversy still exists in this aspect. Here we re-examine the long/short classification of GRBs and further compare the cosmological distribution and evolution of each potential subclass. A large number of $Swift/BAT$ GRBs are analyzed in this study. The Gaussian mixture model is used to fit the duration distribution as well as the joint distribution of duration and hardness ratio, and the Akaike and Bayesian information criteria are adopted to assess the goodness of fit. It is found that three Gaussian components can better fit both the univariate and bivariate distributions, indicating that there are three subclasses in the $Swift/BAT$ GRBs, namely short, intermediate, and long subclasses. The non-parametric Efron-Petrosian and Lynden-Bell's $c^{-}$ methods are used to derive the luminosity function and formation rate from the truncated data of bursts with known redshift in each subclass. It is found that the luminosity distributions and birth rates of the three subclasses are different, further supporting the existence of the intermediate subclass in the $Swift/BAT$ GRBs.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2024

Adaptive extended Kalman filter and point ahead angle prediction in the detection of gravitational waves in space

In the detection of gravitational waves in space, during the science phase of the mission, the point ahead angle mechanism (PAAM) serves to steer a laser beam to compensate for the angle generated by the relative motion of the two spacecrafts (SCs) during the approximately 10 seconds of flight time a laser beam will take from one SC to reach a distant SC of three million kilometers away. The common practice for pointing stability control of a laser beam is to first do a coarse tracking by the PAAM to steer a laser beam to compensate for the relative motion between two SCs, to be followed by a fine pointing stability control. In the present work, by exploiting the near-circular orbit structure of individual SC in the triangular constellation, the feasibility of inserting an adaptive Kalman filter (AEKF) into the PAAM control loop is investigated. By adopting a colored measurement noise model that closely resembles the prospective on orbit situation, numerical simulation suggests that the dynamic range of the PAAM may be reduced to the level of nano-radians using the prediction of the pointing head angle (PAA) by the AEKF. This will cut down on the TTL coupling noise and the position noise budget allocated to the PAAM. This in turn reduces the dynamic range of the fine pointing control and leaves room to improve its accuracy, thereby offers the prospect of reduction of the position noise budget allocated to the laser pointing instability as a whole.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2024

Invar-RAG: Invariant LLM-aligned Retrieval for Better Generation

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) has shown impressive capability in providing reliable answer predictions and addressing hallucination problems. A typical RAG implementation uses powerful retrieval models to extract external information and large language models (LLMs) to generate answers. In contrast, recent LLM-based retrieval has gained attention for its substantial improvements in information retrieval (IR) due to the LLMs' semantic understanding capability. However, directly applying LLM to RAG systems presents challenges. This may cause feature locality problems as massive parametric knowledge can hinder effective usage of global information across the corpus; for example, an LLM-based retriever often inputs document summaries instead of full documents. Moreover, various pre-trained tasks in LLMs introduce variance, further weakening performance as a retriever. To address these issues, we propose a novel two-stage fine-tuning architecture called Invar-RAG. In the retrieval stage, an LLM-based retriever is constructed by integrating LoRA-based representation learning to tackle feature locality issues. To enhance retrieval performance, we develop two patterns (invariant and variant patterns) and an invariance loss to reduce LLM variance. In the generation stage, a refined fine-tuning method is employed to improve LLM accuracy in generating answers based on retrieved information. Experimental results show that Invar-RAG significantly outperforms existing baselines across three open-domain question answering (ODQA) datasets. Code is available in the Supplementary Material for reproducibility.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2024

A Multi-Scale Spatial-Temporal Network for Wireless Video Transmission

Deep joint source-channel coding (DeepJSCC) has shown promise in wireless transmission of text, speech, and images within the realm of semantic communication. However, wireless video transmission presents greater challenges due to the difficulty of extracting and compactly representing both spatial and temporal features, as well as its significant bandwidth and computational resource requirements. In response, we propose a novel video DeepJSCC (VDJSCC) approach to enable end-to-end video transmission over a wireless channel. Our approach involves the design of a multi-scale vision Transformer encoder and decoder to effectively capture spatial-temporal representations over long-term frames. Additionally, we propose a dynamic token selection module to mask less semantically important tokens from spatial or temporal dimensions, allowing for content-adaptive variable-length video coding by adjusting the token keep ratio. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our VDJSCC approach compared to digital schemes that use separate source and channel codes, as well as other DeepJSCC schemes, in terms of reconstruction quality and bandwidth reduction.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2024

Channel-Adaptive Wireless Image Semantic Transmission with Learnable Prompts

Recent developments in Deep learning based Joint Source-Channel Coding (DeepJSCC) have demonstrated impressive capabilities within wireless semantic communications system. However, existing DeepJSCC methodologies exhibit limited generalization ability across varying channel conditions, necessitating the preparation of multiple models. Optimal performance is only attained when the channel status during testing aligns precisely with the training channel status, which is very inconvenient for real-life applications. In this paper, we introduce a novel DeepJSCC framework, termed Prompt JSCC (PJSCC), which incorporates a learnable prompt to implicitly integrate the physical channel state into the transmission system. Specifically, the Channel State Prompt (CSP) module is devised to generate prompts based on diverse SNR and channel distribution models. Through the interaction of latent image features with channel features derived from the CSP module, the DeepJSCC process dynamically adapts to varying channel conditions without necessitating retraining. Comparative analyses against leading DeepJSCC methodologies and traditional separate coding approaches reveal that the proposed PJSCC achieves optimal image reconstruction performance across different SNR settings and various channel models, as assessed by Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Learning-based Perceptual Image Patch Similarity (LPIPS) metrics. Furthermore, in real-world scenarios, PJSCC shows excellent memory efficiency and scalability, rendering it readily deployable on resource-constrained platforms to facilitate semantic communications.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2024

Large Language Model-Based Interpretable Machine Learning Control in Building Energy Systems

The potential of Machine Learning Control (MLC) in HVAC systems is hindered by its opaque nature and inference mechanisms, which is challenging for users and modelers to fully comprehend, ultimately leading to a lack of trust in MLC-based decision-making. To address this challenge, this paper investigates and explores Interpretable Machine Learning (IML), a branch of Machine Learning (ML) that enhances transparency and understanding of models and their inferences, to improve the credibility of MLC and its industrial application in HVAC systems. Specifically, we developed an innovative framework that combines the principles of Shapley values and the in-context learning feature of Large Language Models (LLMs). While the Shapley values are instrumental in dissecting the contributions of various features in ML models, LLM provides an in-depth understanding of the non-data-driven or rule-based elements in MLC; combining them, LLM further packages these insights into a coherent, human-understandable narrative. The paper presents a case study to demonstrate the feasibility of the developed IML framework for model predictive control-based precooling under demand response events in a virtual testbed. The results indicate that the developed framework generates and explains the control signals in accordance with the rule-based rationale.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2024

Advancing Building Energy Modeling with Large Language Models: Exploration and Case Studies

The rapid progression in artificial intelligence has facilitated the emergence of large language models like ChatGPT, offering potential applications extending into specialized engineering modeling, especially physics-based building energy modeling. This paper investigates the innovative integration of large language models with building energy modeling software, focusing specifically on the fusion of ChatGPT with EnergyPlus. A literature review is first conducted to reveal a growing trend of incorporating large language models in engineering modeling, albeit limited research on their application in building energy modeling. We underscore the potential of large language models in addressing building energy modeling challenges and outline potential applications including simulation input generation, simulation output analysis and visualization, conducting error analysis, co-simulation, simulation knowledge extraction and training, and simulation optimization. Three case studies reveal the transformative potential of large language models in automating and optimizing building energy modeling tasks, underscoring the pivotal role of artificial intelligence in advancing sustainable building practices and energy efficiency. The case studies demonstrate that selecting the right large language model techniques is essential to enhance performance and reduce engineering efforts. The findings advocate a multidisciplinary approach in future artificial intelligence research, with implications extending beyond building energy modeling to other specialized engineering modeling.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Attribute-Based Encryption With Payable Outsourced Decryption Using Blockchain and Responsive Zero Knowledge Proof

Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) is a promising solution for access control in cloud services. However, the heavy decryption overhead hinders its widespread adoption. A general approach to address this issue is to outsource decryption to decryption cloud service(DCS). Existing schemes have utilized various methods to enable users to verify outsourced results; however, they lack an effective mechanism to achieve exemptibility which enables the honest DCS to escape from wrong claims. And it is impractical to assume that the DCS will provide free services. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based payable outsourced decryption ABE scheme that achieves both verifiability and exemptibility without adding redundant information to ABE ciphertext. We use zero-knowledge proof to verify outsourced results on blockchain and introduce an optional single-round challenge game under optimistic assumption to address the high cost of proof generation. Moreover, our system achieves fairness and decentralized outsourcing to protect the interests of all parties. Finally, we implement and evaluate our scheme on Ethereum to demonstrate its feasibility and efficiency, the gas usage in attribute numbers from 5 to 60 is 11$\times$ to 140$\times$ in the happy case and 4$\times$ to 55$\times$ in the challenge case lower than the scheme of Ge et al. (TDSC'23).

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

Exploring Optimal Transport-Based Multi-Grained Alignments for Text-Molecule Retrieval

The field of bioinformatics has seen significant progress, making the cross-modal text-molecule retrieval task increasingly vital. This task focuses on accurately retrieving molecule structures based on textual descriptions, by effectively aligning textual descriptions and molecules to assist researchers in identifying suitable molecular candidates. However, many existing approaches overlook the details inherent in molecule sub-structures. In this work, we introduce the Optimal TRansport-based Multi-grained Alignments model (ORMA), a novel approach that facilitates multi-grained alignments between textual descriptions and molecules. Our model features a text encoder and a molecule encoder. The text encoder processes textual descriptions to generate both token-level and sentence-level representations, while molecules are modeled as hierarchical heterogeneous graphs, encompassing atom, motif, and molecule nodes to extract representations at these three levels. A key innovation in ORMA is the application of Optimal Transport (OT) to align tokens with motifs, creating multi-token representations that integrate multiple token alignments with their corresponding motifs. Additionally, we employ contrastive learning to refine cross-modal alignments at three distinct scales: token-atom, multitoken-motif, and sentence-molecule, ensuring that the similarities between correctly matched text-molecule pairs are maximized while those of unmatched pairs are minimized. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to explore alignments at both the motif and multi-token levels. Experimental results on the ChEBI-20 and PCdes datasets demonstrate that ORMA significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) models.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2024

Towards Cross-Modal Text-Molecule Retrieval with Better Modality Alignment

Cross-modal text-molecule retrieval model aims to learn a shared feature space of the text and molecule modalities for accurate similarity calculation, which facilitates the rapid screening of molecules with specific properties and activities in drug design. However, previous works have two main defects. First, they are inadequate in capturing modality-shared features considering the significant gap between text sequences and molecule graphs. Second, they mainly rely on contrastive learning and adversarial training for cross-modality alignment, both of which mainly focus on the first-order similarity, ignoring the second-order similarity that can capture more structural information in the embedding space. To address these issues, we propose a novel cross-modal text-molecule retrieval model with two-fold improvements. Specifically, on the top of two modality-specific encoders, we stack a memory bank based feature projector that contain learnable memory vectors to extract modality-shared features better. More importantly, during the model training, we calculate four kinds of similarity distributions (text-to-text, text-to-molecule, molecule-to-molecule, and molecule-to-text similarity distributions) for each instance, and then minimize the distance between these similarity distributions (namely second-order similarity losses) to enhance cross-modal alignment. Experimental results and analysis strongly demonstrate the effectiveness of our model. Particularly, our model achieves SOTA performance, outperforming the previously-reported best result by 6.4%.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2024

Pro-PRIME: A general Temperature-Guided Language model to engineer enhanced Stability and Activity in Proteins

Designing protein mutants of both high stability and activity is a critical yet challenging task in protein engineering. Here, we introduce PRIME, a deep learning model, which can suggest protein mutants of improved stability and activity without any prior experimental mutagenesis data of the specified protein. Leveraging temperature-aware language modeling, PRIME demonstrated superior predictive power compared to current state-of-the-art models on the public mutagenesis dataset over 283 protein assays. Furthermore, we validated PRIME's predictions on five proteins, examining the top 30-45 single-site mutations' impact on various protein properties, including thermal stability, antigen-antibody binding affinity, and the ability to polymerize non-natural nucleic acid or resilience to extreme alkaline conditions. Remarkably, over 30% of the AI-recommended mutants exhibited superior performance compared to their pre-mutation counterparts across all proteins and desired properties. Moreover, we have developed an efficient, and successful method based on PRIME to rapidly obtain multi-site mutants with enhanced activity and stability. Hence, PRIME demonstrates the general applicability in protein engineering.

q-bio.BM↗

arXiv2024

One2set + Large Language Model: Best Partners for Keyphrase Generation

Keyphrase generation (KPG) aims to automatically generate a collection of phrases representing the core concepts of a given document. The dominant paradigms in KPG include one2seq and one2set. Recently, there has been increasing interest in applying large language models (LLMs) to KPG. Our preliminary experiments reveal that it is challenging for a single model to excel in both recall and precision. Further analysis shows that: 1) the one2set paradigm owns the advantage of high recall, but suffers from improper assignments of supervision signals during training; 2) LLMs are powerful in keyphrase selection, but existing selection methods often make redundant selections. Given these observations, we introduce a generate-then-select framework decomposing KPG into two steps, where we adopt a one2set-based model as generator to produce candidates and then use an LLM as selector to select keyphrases from these candidates. Particularly, we make two important improvements on our generator and selector: 1) we design an Optimal Transport-based assignment strategy to address the above improper assignments; 2) we model the keyphrase selection as a sequence labeling task to alleviate redundant selections. Experimental results on multiple benchmark datasets show that our framework significantly surpasses state-of-the-art models, especially in absent keyphrase prediction.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2024

Implicit Regularization of Sharpness-Aware Minimization for Scale-Invariant Problems

Sharpness-aware minimization (SAM) improves generalization of various deep learning tasks. Motivated by popular architectures such as LoRA, we explore the implicit regularization of SAM for scale-invariant problems involving two groups of variables. Instead of focusing on commonly used sharpness, this work introduces a concept termed balancedness, defined as the difference between the squared norm of two variables. This allows us to depict richer global behaviors of SAM. In particular, our theoretical and empirical findings reveal that i) SAM promotes balancedness; and ii) the regularization on balancedness is data-responsive -- outliers have stronger impact. The latter coincides with empirical observations that SAM outperforms SGD in the presence of outliers. Leveraging the implicit regularization, we develop a resource-efficient SAM variant, balancedness-aware regularization (BAR), tailored for scale-invariant problems such as finetuning language models with LoRA. BAR saves 95% computational overhead of SAM, with enhanced test performance across various tasks on RoBERTa, GPT2, and OPT-1.3B.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

A Systematic Assessment of OpenAI o1-Preview for Higher Order Thinking in Education

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, it demonstrates capabilities comparable to human intelligence, with significant potential to transform education and workforce development. This study evaluates OpenAI o1-preview's ability to perform higher-order cognitive tasks across 14 dimensions, including critical thinking, systems thinking, computational thinking, design thinking, metacognition, data literacy, creative thinking, abstract reasoning, quantitative reasoning, logical reasoning, analogical reasoning, and scientific reasoning. We used validated instruments like the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test and the Biological Systems Thinking Test to compare the o1-preview's performance with human performance systematically. Our findings reveal that o1-preview outperforms humans in most categories, achieving 150% better results in systems thinking, computational thinking, data literacy, creative thinking, scientific reasoning, and abstract reasoning. However, compared to humans, it underperforms by around 25% in logical reasoning, critical thinking, and quantitative reasoning. In analogical reasoning, both o1-preview and humans achieved perfect scores. Despite these strengths, the o1-preview shows limitations in abstract reasoning, where human psychology students outperform it, highlighting the continued importance of human oversight in tasks requiring high-level abstraction. These results have significant educational implications, suggesting a shift toward developing human skills that complement AI, such as creativity, abstract reasoning, and critical thinking. This study emphasizes the transformative potential of AI in education and calls for a recalibration of educational goals, teaching methods, and curricula to align with an AI-driven world.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2024

A practical applicable quantum-classical hybrid ant colony algorithm for the NISQ era

Quantum ant colony optimization (QACO) has drew much attention since it combines the advantages of quantum computing and ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm overcoming some limitations of the traditional ACO algorithm. However,due to the hardware resource limitations of currently available quantum computers, the practical application of the QACO is still not realized. In this paper, we developed a quantum-classical hybrid algorithm by combining the clustering algorithm with QACO algorithm.This extended QACO can handle large-scale optimization problems with currently available quantum computing resource. We have tested the effectiveness and performance of the extended QACO algorithm with the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) as benchmarks, and found the algorithm achieves better performance under multiple diverse datasets. In addition, we investigated the noise impact on the extended QACO and evaluated its operation possibility on current available noisy intermediate scale quantum(NISQ) devices. Our work shows that the combination of the clustering algorithm with QACO effectively improved its problem solving scale, which makes its practical application possible in current NISQ era of quantum computing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

SPL: A Socratic Playground for Learning Powered by Large Language Model

Dialogue-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have significantly advanced adaptive and personalized learning by automating sophisticated human tutoring strategies within interactive dialogues. However, replicating the nuanced patterns of expert human communication remains a challenge in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Recent advancements in NLP, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's GPT-4, offer promising solutions by providing human-like and context-aware responses based on extensive pre-trained knowledge. Motivated by the effectiveness of LLMs in various educational tasks (e.g., content creation and summarization, problem-solving, and automated feedback provision), our study introduces the Socratic Playground for Learning (SPL), a dialogue-based ITS powered by the GPT-4 model, which employs the Socratic teaching method to foster critical thinking among learners. Through extensive prompt engineering, SPL can generate specific learning scenarios and facilitates efficient multi-turn tutoring dialogues. The SPL system aims to enhance personalized and adaptive learning experiences tailored to individual needs, specifically focusing on improving critical thinking skills. Our pilot experimental results from essay writing tasks demonstrate SPL has the potential to improve tutoring interactions and further enhance dialogue-based ITS functionalities. Our study, exemplified by SPL, demonstrates how LLMs enhance dialogue-based ITSs and expand the accessibility and efficacy of educational technologies.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2024

Geometry of the comptonization region of MAXI J1348$-$630 through type-C quasi-periodic oscillations with NICER

We use the rms and lag spectra of the type-C quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) to study the properties of the Comptonisation region (aka corona) during the low/hard and hard-intermediate states of the main outburst and reflare of MAXI J1348$-$630. We simultaneously fit the time-averaged energy spectrum of the source and the fractional rms and phase-lag spectra of the QPO with the time-dependent Comptonization model vKompth. The data can be explained by two physically connected coronae interacting with the accretion disc via a feedback loop of X-ray photons. The best-fitting model consists of a corona of $\sim$10$^3$ km located at the inner edge of the disc and a second corona of $\sim$10$^4$ km horizontally extended and covering the inner parts of the accretion disc. The properties of both coronae during the reflare are similar to those during the low/hard state of the main outburst, reinforcing the idea that both the outburst and the reflare are driven by the same physical mechanisms. We combine our results for the type-C QPO with those from previous work focused on the study of type-A and type-B QPOs with the same model to study the evolution of the geometry of the corona through the whole outburst, including the reflare of MAXI J1348$-$630. Finally, we show that the sudden increase in the phase-lag frequency spectrum and the sharp drop in the coherence function previously observed in MAXI J1348$-$630 are due to the type-C QPO during the decay of the outburst and can be explained in terms of the geometry of the coronae.

astro-ph.HE↗