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Xin Cui

Publications and source records attributed to Xin Cui.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

Frequency-Calibrated Decision-Focused Learning for BESS Dispatch Under Renewable Uncertainty

Battery energy storage system (BESS) flexibility depends on state of charge and intertemporal operating constraints. Renewable forecast errors of similar magnitudes can lead to different BESS dispatch results. An error may alter early charging or discharging decisions and reduce the flexibility available for subsequent regulation, while another may have little effect on the resulting schedule. To account for these unequal consequences, this paper proposes Frequency-Calibrated Decision-Focused Learning (FC-DFL), which trains renewable predictors using the realized operating costs of their induced BESS schedules. Gaussian smoothing and solver-based zeroth-order estimation provide training feedback without requiring differentiating through the non-differentiable mixed-integer BESS dispatch problem. The same decision feedback is further combined with prediction sensitivity to develop a decision-oriented XAI method that identifies the input features and forecast periods most consequential to BESS operation. Case studies using German wind and solar data show that FC-DFL reduces the integrated absolute frequency-deviation metric by 6.05% and decision regret by 23.92% relative to accuracy-based predict-then-optimize method. The XAI analysis further demonstrates that the identified high-impact forecast periods produce 2.84 times larger average absolute changes in realized operating cost than low-impact periods. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating downstream decision-making outcomes into renewable forecasting and demonstrate the value of FC-DFL in improving BESS regulation and providing operationally meaningful forecast explanations.

eess.SY↗

UXBench Pro: Benchmarking Personalized User Experience in Multi-Turn Dialogue Interactions

Evaluating user experience (UX) with automated computational methods has gained increasing attention, supported by empirical evidence from UXBench. However, binary preference prediction provides limited insight, while relying on a single user-agnostic reward model overlooks the inherent heterogeneity of users, whose expectations can differ substantially. In this paper, we present UXBench Pro, comprising 1{,}000 test instances derived from real user interactions across 12 task scenarios and 82 domains. Each instance is paired with a FACTORS user profile that characterizes the user through seven interpretable behavioral facets, differentiating user groups. To provide richer evaluation insights, we introduce a dual-perspective paradigm that combines a personalized User Reward Model (URM) for third-person judgment with Sim4Eval, a user simulator that enables multi-turn interactions and provides first-person evaluation across four cognitive state dimensions. To assess the reliability of these based evaluators, we further introduce two meta-benchmarks, URMBench and USimBench, that evaluate how faithfully they reproduce real human preferences and behaviors. Extensive experiments reveal seven key findings that highlight the importance of user modeling and multi-perspective evaluation, offering a fresh perspective on user-centric benchmarking and motivating personalized model optimization.

cs.CL↗

When Terminal-Agent Training Stalls: Demystifying Data Generation and Verification Challenge

Using a frontier model like Claude Opus as a meta-agent to generate terminal tasks and verifiers for RL training is increasingly common. Yet a runnable Docker image and executable test suite do not guarantee a faithful end-to-end pipeline for terminal agent training. We present a meta-agent pipeline motivated by this gap, diagnosing three classes of failure: benchmark invalidity, harness brittleness, and reward misalignment. Prompt redesign and context extension raise baseline solvability 5.6 times, but a 9B model saturates at 81.3% mean pass@2 within 20 steps on Claude Opus-generated tasks. Adding hard tasks reduces mean pass@2 to 20.6% without changing the training configuration, a strong evidence that the solvability band is model-specific. These findings demonstrate that meta-agent reliability requires solvability-band calibration, verifier audits, and infrastructure error accounting as first-class evaluation criteria, not post-hoc diagnost.

cs.AI↗

TRACE: A Multi-Agent System for Autonomous Physical Reasoning for Seismology

Modern seismic networks resolve earthquake sequences in unprecedented detail, yet explaining how large earthquakes emerge from evolving fault systems remains difficult. We introduce TRACE, a seismology-guided artificial intelligence agent that plans and executes workflows while preserving auditable evidence chains from observations to physical interpretation. We evaluated TRACE through 104 benchmark tasks and two complementary earthquake sequences. For the well-studied 2019 Ridgecrest sequence, TRACE constructed a high-resolution catalog from continuous waveforms and retrospectively recovered delayed cascading activation between the Mw 6.4 and Mw 7.1 earthquakes without a prescribed target interpretation. In the less-understood 2025-2026 Sanriku sequence off northeastern Japan, TRACE developed a testable interpretation of progressive destabilization within a segmented megathrust. Its synthesis linked coupled seismic-aseismic activation around the MJ 6.9 sequence and subsequent persistent, spatially segmented shallow-interface activity to a megathrust patch that lay between regions of past large coseismic slip and later hosted the MJ 7.7 rupture. These results open a path from seismic observations to testable physical insight.

physics.geo-ph↗

Privacy-Preserving Coordinated Operation of Power Grids and AI Data Centers: A Checkpoint-Aware Three-Phase Scheme

The rapid growth of large language model training and serving is driving AI data centers (AIDCs) toward gigawatt scale. Unlike conventional commercial loads, AIDCs possess significant operational flexibility through dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) of training and inference workloads, while periodic model checkpointing can induce abrupt power drops and rebounds that erode operating reserves and increase transmission congestion risks. Coordinating AIDC operation with grid scheduling under these unique operational characteristics is challenging because grid and AIDC operators are generally unwilling to share proprietary data and decision-making authority. This paper proposes a hierarchical privacy-preserving coordinated operation scheme between the power grid and AIDCs to address this gap. The proposed scheme contains three phases. In Phase I, the grid operator computes a certified inner approximation of the AIDCs security region for subsequent coordination. In Phase II, the AIDC operator coordinates training and inference AIDCs to optimize workload allocation within the certified security region and generate power schedules and checkpoint alerts. In Phase III, the grid operator solves a checkpoint-aware two-stage robust optimal power flow (OPF) considering renewable generation and checkpoint uncertainties. By exchanging only compact interface information, the framework preserves the privacy of both grid and AIDCs, avoids frequent iterative communication, and enables secure coordination with guaranteed feasibility. Numerical studies on a modified IEEE 14-bus system and a modified NYISO system demonstrate the effectiveness, robustness, and security of the proposed framework.

eess.SY↗

Privacy-Preserving Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading via Hybrid Secure Computations

The massive integration of uncertain distributed renewable energy resources into power systems raises power imbalance concerns. Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading provides a promising way to balance the prosumers' volatile energy power generation and demands locally. Particularly, to protect the privacy of prosumers, distributed P2P energy trading is broadly advocated. However, severe privacy leakage issues can emerge in the realistic fully distributed P2P energy trading paradigm. Meanwhile, in this paradigm, two-party and multi-party computations coexist, challenging the naive privacy-preserving techniques. To tackle privacy leakage issues arising from the fully distributed P2P energy trading, this paper proposes a privacy-preserving approach via hybrid secure computations. A secure multi-party computation mechanism consisting of offline and online phases is developed to ensure the security of shared data by leveraging the tailored secret sharing method. In addition, the Paillier encryption method based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem is proposed for both the secure two-party computation and the offline phase of the multi-party computation. The random encryption coefficient is designed to enhance the security of the two-party computation and simultaneously guarantee the convergence of the distributed optimization. The feasible range for the encryption coefficient is derived with a strict mathematical proof. Numerical simulations demonstrate the exactness, effectiveness, and scalability of the proposed privacy-preserving approach.

eess.SY↗

Single-Spin Waved-Brim Flat-Top Hat in the Band Edge of GdIH Monolayer

Exotic electronic bands, such as flat bands, linear crossing bands, spontaneously valley- or spin-polarized bands, in two-dimensional materials have been the hot topics in condensed matter physics. Herein, we first propose a general dispersion model for possible hat-like electronic bands, and then identify an intriguing single-spin \emph{waved-brim flat-top hat} in the valence band edge of a stable ferromagnetic semiconducting electrene (i.e., Janus GdIH monolayer), which can be well described by a simplified two-bands Hamiltonian model. Specifically, the hat-band has a waved brim with six valleys along the boundary of the first Brillouin zone; meanwhile it holds a flat top close to the Fermi level, resulting in the emergence of single-spin van Hove singularities divergence and Lifshitz transitions. Owing to the breaking of both time-reversal and space inversion symmetries, a sizable spontaneous valley polarization is formed between the adjacent brim valleys, which provides the opportunity to realize the high-temperature anomalous valley Hall effect. Particularly, via modest strains and carriers doping, various conductive bipolar-states (spin-up vs. spin-down, K valley vs. $-$K valley, and ultra-low-speed vs. ultra-high-speed) can be modulated out from the distorted waved-brim flat-top hat of GdIH ML.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Comment on "Topological Nodal-Net Semimetal in a Graphene Network Structure"

Recently, a distinct topological semimetal, nodal-net semimetal, has been identified by Wang et al. through ab initio calculations [Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 026402 (2018)]. The authors claimed that a new body-centered tetragonal carbon allotrope with I4/mmm symmetry, termed bct-C40, can host this novel state exhibiting boxed-astrisk shaped nodal nets. In this Comment, we demonstrate that bct-C40 is in fact a nodal surface semimetal, the concept of which has been proposed as early as 2016 [Phys. Rev. B 93, 085427 (2016)].

physics.comp-ph↗

JointGT: Graph-Text Joint Representation Learning for Text Generation from Knowledge Graphs

Existing pre-trained models for knowledge-graph-to-text (KG-to-text) generation simply fine-tune text-to-text pre-trained models such as BART or T5 on KG-to-text datasets, which largely ignore the graph structure during encoding and lack elaborate pre-training tasks to explicitly model graph-text alignments. To tackle these problems, we propose a graph-text joint representation learning model called JointGT. During encoding, we devise a structure-aware semantic aggregation module which is plugged into each Transformer layer to preserve the graph structure. Furthermore, we propose three new pre-training tasks to explicitly enhance the graph-text alignment including respective text / graph reconstruction, and graph-text alignment in the embedding space via Optimal Transport. Experiments show that JointGT obtains new state-of-the-art performance on various KG-to-text datasets.

cs.CL↗

Shapley Interpretation and Activation in Neural Networks

We propose a novel Shapley value approach to help address neural networks' interpretability and "vanishing gradient" problems. Our method is based on an accurate analytical approximation to the Shapley value of a neuron with ReLU activation. This analytical approximation admits a linear propagation of relevance across neural network layers, resulting in a simple, fast and sensible interpretation of neural networks' decision making process. We then derived a globally continuous and non-vanishing Shapley gradient, which can replace the conventional gradient in training neural network layers with ReLU activation, and leading to better training performance. We further derived a Shapley Activation (SA) function, which is a close approximation to ReLU but features the Shapley gradient. The SA is easy to implement in existing machine learning frameworks. Numerical tests show that SA consistently outperforms ReLU in training convergence, accuracy and stability.

stat.ML↗

All-Silicon Topological Semimetals with Closed Nodal Line

Owing to the natural compatibility with current semiconductor industry, silicon allotropes with diverse structural and electronic properties provide promising platforms for the next-generation Si-based devices. After screening 230 all-silicon crystals in the zeolite frameworks by first-principles calculations, we disclose two structurally stable Si allotropes (AHT-Si24 and VFI-Si36) containing open channels as topological node-line semimetals with Dirac nodal points forming a nodal loop in the kz=0 plane of Brillouin zone. Interestingly, their nodal loops protected by inversion and time-reversal symmetries are robust against SU(2) symmetry breaking due to very weak spin-orbit coupling of Si. When the nodal lines are projected onto the (001) surface, flat surface bands can be observed because of the nontrivial topology of the bulk band structures. Our discoveries extend the topological physics to the three-dimensional Si materials, highlighting the possibility to realize low-cost, nontoxic and semiconductor-compatible Si-based electronics with topological quantum states.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗