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Zhiyuan Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Zhiyuan Zhang.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

Coordinate Descent Full Configuration Interaction for Excited States

An efficient excited state method, named xCDFCI, in the configuration interaction framework, is proposed. xCDFCI extends the unconstrained nonconvex optimization problem in coordinate descent full configuration interaction~(CDFCI) to a multicolumn version, for low-lying excited states computation. The optimization problem is addressed via a tailored coordinate descent method. In each iteration, a determinant is selected based on an approximated gradient, and coefficients of all states associated with the selected determinant are updated. A deterministic compression is applied to limit memory usage. We test xCDFCI applied to H2O and N2 molecules under the cc-pVDZ basis set. For both systems, five low-lying excited states in the same symmetry sector are calculated together with the ground state. xCDFCI also produces accurate binding curves of carbon dimer in the cc-pVDZ basis with chemical accuracy, where the ground state and four excited states in the same symmetry sector are benchmarked.

physics.chem-ph↗

A Unified Bregman Alternating Minimization Algorithm for Generalized DC Programming with Application to Imaging Data

In this paper, we consider a class of nonconvex (not necessarily differentiable) optimization problems called generalized DC (Difference-of-Convex functions) programming, which is minimizing the sum of two separable DC parts and one two-block-variable coupling function. To circumvent the nonconvexity and nonseparability of the problem under consideration, we accordingly introduce a Unified Bregman Alternating Minimization Algorithm (UBAMA) by maximally exploiting the favorable DC structure of the objective. Specifically, we first follow the spirit of alternating minimization to update each block variable in a sequential order, which can efficiently tackle the nonseparablitity caused by the coupling function. Then, we employ the Fenchel-Young inequality to approximate the second DC components (i.e., concave parts) so that each subproblem reduces to a convex optimization problem, thereby alleviating the computational burden of the nonconvex DC parts. Moreover, each subproblem absorbs a Bregman proximal regularization term, which is usually beneficial for inducing closed-form solutions of subproblems for many cases via choosing appropriate Bregman kernel functions. It is remarkable that our algorithm not only provides an algorithmic framework to understand the iterative schemes of some novel existing algorithms, but also enjoys implementable schemes with easier subproblems than some state-of-the-art first-order algorithms developed for generic nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems. Theoretically, we prove that the sequence generated by our algorithm globally converges to a critical point under the Kurdyka-Łojasiewicz (KŁ) condition. Besides, we estimate the local convergence rates of our algorithm when we further know the prior information of the KŁ exponent.

math.OC↗

SonoTransformers: Ultrafast Transformable Wireless Microscale Machines

Shape transformation, a key mechanism for organismal survival and adaptation, has gained importance across fields as diverse as electronics and medicine. However, designing and controlling microscale shape-shifting materials remains a fundamental challenge in various actuation modalities. Here, we introduce SonoTransformer, an acoustically activated micromachine that delivers ultrafast transformability using preprogrammed soft hinges. These hinges concentrate energy through intensified oscillation and provide the necessary torque for transformation. We have created new machine designs to predetermine the folding state, enabling tailoring and milliseconds transformation. Additionally, we have shown selective transformation by adjusting acoustic power, realizing high degrees of control and functional versatility. Our findings open new research avenues in acoustics, physics, and soft matter, offering new design paradigms and development opportunities in robotics, metamaterials, adaptive optics, and microtechnology.

physics.app-ph↗

Continuous Layout Editing of Single Images with Diffusion Models

Recent advancements in large-scale text-to-image diffusion models have enabled many applications in image editing. However, none of these methods have been able to edit the layout of single existing images. To address this gap, we propose the first framework for layout editing of a single image while preserving its visual properties, thus allowing for continuous editing on a single image. Our approach is achieved through two key modules. First, to preserve the characteristics of multiple objects within an image, we disentangle the concepts of different objects and embed them into separate textual tokens using a novel method called masked textual inversion. Next, we propose a training-free optimization method to perform layout control for a pre-trained diffusion model, which allows us to regenerate images with learned concepts and align them with user-specified layouts. As the first framework to edit the layout of existing images, we demonstrate that our method is effective and outperforms other baselines that were modified to support this task. Our code will be freely available for public use upon acceptance.

cs.CV↗

TransAct: Transformer-based Realtime User Action Model for Recommendation at Pinterest

Sequential models that encode user activity for next action prediction have become a popular design choice for building web-scale personalized recommendation systems. Traditional methods of sequential recommendation either utilize end-to-end learning on realtime user actions, or learn user representations separately in an offline batch-generated manner. This paper (1) presents Pinterest's ranking architecture for Homefeed, our personalized recommendation product and the largest engagement surface; (2) proposes TransAct, a sequential model that extracts users' short-term preferences from their realtime activities; (3) describes our hybrid approach to ranking, which combines end-to-end sequential modeling via TransAct with batch-generated user embeddings. The hybrid approach allows us to combine the advantages of responsiveness from learning directly on realtime user activity with the cost-effectiveness of batch user representations learned over a longer time period. We describe the results of ablation studies, the challenges we faced during productionization, and the outcome of an online A/B experiment, which validates the effectiveness of our hybrid ranking model. We further demonstrate the effectiveness of TransAct on other surfaces such as contextual recommendations and search. Our model has been deployed to production in Homefeed, Related Pins, Notifications, and Search at Pinterest.

cs.IR↗

Diffusion Theory as a Scalpel: Detecting and Purifying Poisonous Dimensions in Pre-trained Language Models Caused by Backdoor or Bias

Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) may be poisonous with backdoors or bias injected by the suspicious attacker during the fine-tuning process. A core challenge of purifying potentially poisonous PLMs is precisely finding poisonous dimensions. To settle this issue, we propose the Fine-purifying approach, which utilizes the diffusion theory to study the dynamic process of fine-tuning for finding potentially poisonous dimensions. According to the relationship between parameter drifts and Hessians of different dimensions, we can detect poisonous dimensions with abnormal dynamics, purify them by resetting them to clean pre-trained weights, and then fine-tune the purified weights on a small clean dataset. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study the dynamics guided by the diffusion theory for safety or defense purposes. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of Fine-purifying even with a small clean dataset.

cs.CL↗

Spectral conditions for forbidden subgraphs in bipartite graphs

A graph $G$ is $H$-free, if it contains no $H$ as a subgraph. A graph is said to be \emph{$H$-minor free}, if it does not contain $H$ as a minor. In recent years, Nikiforov asked that what is the maximum spectral radius of an $H$-free graph of order $n$? In this paper, we consider about some Brualdi-Solheid-Turán type problems on bipartite graphs. In 2015, Zhai, Lin and Gong proved that if $G$ is a bipartite graph with order $n \geq 2k+2$ and $ρ(G)\geq ρ(K_{k,n-k})$, then $G$ contains a $C_{2k+2}$ unless $G \cong K_{k,n-k}$ [Linear Algebra Appl. 471 (2015)]. Firstly, we give a new and more simple proof for the above theorem. Secondly, we prove that if $G$ is a bipartite graph with order $n \geq 2k+2$ and $ρ(G)\geq ρ(K_{k,n-k})$, then $G$ contains all $T_{2k+3}$ unless $G \cong K_{k,n-k}$. Finally, we prove that among all outerplanar bipartite graphs on $n>344569$ vertices, $K_{1,n-1}$ attains the maximum spectral radius.

math.CO↗

ASAT: Adaptively Scaled Adversarial Training in Time Series

Adversarial training is a method for enhancing neural networks to improve the robustness against adversarial examples. Besides the security concerns of potential adversarial examples, adversarial training can also improve the generalization ability of neural networks, train robust neural networks, and provide interpretability for neural networks. In this work, we introduce adversarial training in time series analysis to enhance the neural networks for better generalization ability by taking the finance field as an example. Rethinking existing research on adversarial training, we propose the adaptively scaled adversarial training (ASAT) in time series analysis, by rescaling data at different time slots with adaptive scales. Experimental results show that the proposed ASAT can improve both the generalization ability and the adversarial robustness of neural networks compared to the baselines. Compared to the traditional adversarial training algorithm, ASAT can achieve better generalization ability and similar adversarial robustness.

cs.LG↗

Searching Dense Point Correspondences via Permutation Matrix Learning

Although 3D point cloud data has received widespread attentions as a general form of 3D signal expression, applying point clouds to the task of dense correspondence estimation between 3D shapes has not been investigated widely. Furthermore, even in the few existing 3D point cloud-based methods, an important and widely acknowledged principle, i.e . one-to-one matching, is usually ignored. In response, this paper presents a novel end-to-end learning-based method to estimate the dense correspondence of 3D point clouds, in which the problem of point matching is formulated as a zero-one assignment problem to achieve a permutation matching matrix to implement the one-to-one principle fundamentally. Note that the classical solutions of this assignment problem are always non-differentiable, which is fatal for deep learning frameworks. Thus we design a special matching module, which solves a doubly stochastic matrix at first and then projects this obtained approximate solution to the desired permutation matrix. Moreover, to guarantee end-to-end learning and the accuracy of the calculated loss, we calculate the loss from the learned permutation matrix but propagate the gradient to the doubly stochastic matrix directly which bypasses the permutation matrix during the backward propagation. Our method can be applied to both non-rigid and rigid 3D point cloud data and extensive experiments show that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance for dense correspondence learning.

cs.CV↗

Learning a Task-specific Descriptor for Robust Matching of 3D Point Clouds

Existing learning-based point feature descriptors are usually task-agnostic, which pursue describing the individual 3D point clouds as accurate as possible. However, the matching task aims at describing the corresponding points consistently across different 3D point clouds. Therefore these too accurate features may play a counterproductive role due to the inconsistent point feature representations of correspondences caused by the unpredictable noise, partiality, deformation, \etc, in the local geometry. In this paper, we propose to learn a robust task-specific feature descriptor to consistently describe the correct point correspondence under interference. Born with an Encoder and a Dynamic Fusion module, our method EDFNet develops from two aspects. First, we augment the matchability of correspondences by utilizing their repetitive local structure. To this end, a special encoder is designed to exploit two input point clouds jointly for each point descriptor. It not only captures the local geometry of each point in the current point cloud by convolution, but also exploits the repetitive structure from paired point cloud by Transformer. Second, we propose a dynamical fusion module to jointly use different scale features. There is an inevitable struggle between robustness and discriminativeness of the single scale feature. Specifically, the small scale feature is robust since little interference exists in this small receptive field. But it is not sufficiently discriminative as there are many repetitive local structures within a point cloud. Thus the resultant descriptors will lead to many incorrect matches. In contrast, the large scale feature is more discriminative by integrating more neighborhood information. ...

cs.CV↗

Fine-mixing: Mitigating Backdoors in Fine-tuned Language Models

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are known to be vulnerable to backdoor attacks. In Natural Language Processing (NLP), DNNs are often backdoored during the fine-tuning process of a large-scale Pre-trained Language Model (PLM) with poisoned samples. Although the clean weights of PLMs are readily available, existing methods have ignored this information in defending NLP models against backdoor attacks. In this work, we take the first step to exploit the pre-trained (unfine-tuned) weights to mitigate backdoors in fine-tuned language models. Specifically, we leverage the clean pre-trained weights via two complementary techniques: (1) a two-step Fine-mixing technique, which first mixes the backdoored weights (fine-tuned on poisoned data) with the pre-trained weights, then fine-tunes the mixed weights on a small subset of clean data; (2) an Embedding Purification (E-PUR) technique, which mitigates potential backdoors existing in the word embeddings. We compare Fine-mixing with typical backdoor mitigation methods on three single-sentence sentiment classification tasks and two sentence-pair classification tasks and show that it outperforms the baselines by a considerable margin in all scenarios. We also show that our E-PUR method can benefit existing mitigation methods. Our work establishes a simple but strong baseline defense for secure fine-tuned NLP models against backdoor attacks.

cs.CL↗

Expose Backdoors on the Way: A Feature-Based Efficient Defense against Textual Backdoor Attacks

Natural language processing (NLP) models are known to be vulnerable to backdoor attacks, which poses a newly arisen threat to NLP models. Prior online backdoor defense methods for NLP models only focus on the anomalies at either the input or output level, still suffering from fragility to adaptive attacks and high computational cost. In this work, we take the first step to investigate the unconcealment of textual poisoned samples at the intermediate-feature level and propose a feature-based efficient online defense method. Through extensive experiments on existing attacking methods, we find that the poisoned samples are far away from clean samples in the intermediate feature space of a poisoned NLP model. Motivated by this observation, we devise a distance-based anomaly score (DAN) to distinguish poisoned samples from clean samples at the feature level. Experiments on sentiment analysis and offense detection tasks demonstrate the superiority of DAN, as it substantially surpasses existing online defense methods in terms of defending performance and enjoys lower inference costs. Moreover, we show that DAN is also resistant to adaptive attacks based on feature-level regularization. Our code is available at https://github.com/lancopku/DAN.

cs.CL↗

Dim-Krum: Backdoor-Resistant Federated Learning for NLP with Dimension-wise Krum-Based Aggregation

Despite the potential of federated learning, it is known to be vulnerable to backdoor attacks. Many robust federated aggregation methods are proposed to reduce the potential backdoor risk. However, they are mainly validated in the CV field. In this paper, we find that NLP backdoors are hard to defend against than CV, and we provide a theoretical analysis that the malicious update detection error probabilities are determined by the relative backdoor strengths. NLP attacks tend to have small relative backdoor strengths, which may result in the failure of robust federated aggregation methods for NLP attacks. Inspired by the theoretical results, we can choose some dimensions with higher backdoor strengths to settle this issue. We propose a novel federated aggregation algorithm, Dim-Krum, for NLP tasks, and experimental results validate its effectiveness.

cs.LG↗

GA-SAM: Gradient-Strength based Adaptive Sharpness-Aware Minimization for Improved Generalization

Recently, Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SAM) algorithm has shown state-of-the-art generalization abilities in vision tasks. It demonstrates that flat minima tend to imply better generalization abilities. However, it has some difficulty implying SAM to some natural language tasks, especially to models with drastic gradient changes, such as RNNs. In this work, we analyze the relation between the flatness of the local minimum and its generalization ability from a novel and straightforward theoretical perspective. We propose that the shift of the training and test distributions can be equivalently seen as a virtual parameter corruption or perturbation, which can explain why flat minima that are robust against parameter corruptions or perturbations have better generalization performances. On its basis, we propose a Gradient-Strength based Adaptive Sharpness-Aware Minimization (GA-SAM) algorithm to help to learn algorithms find flat minima that generalize better. Results in various language benchmarks validate the effectiveness of the proposed GA-SAM algorithm on natural language tasks.

cs.LG↗

Automatic Translating between Ancient Chinese and Contemporary Chinese with Limited Aligned Corpora

The Chinese language has evolved a lot during the long-term development. Therefore, native speakers now have trouble in reading sentences written in ancient Chinese. In this paper, we propose to build an end-to-end neural model to automatically translate between ancient and contemporary Chinese. However, the existing ancient-contemporary Chinese parallel corpora are not aligned at the sentence level and sentence-aligned corpora are limited, which makes it difficult to train the model. To build the sentence level parallel training data for the model, we propose an unsupervised algorithm that constructs sentence-aligned ancient-contemporary pairs by using the fact that the aligned sentence pair shares many of the tokens. Based on the aligned corpus, we propose an end-to-end neural model with copying mechanism and local attention to translate between ancient and contemporary Chinese. Experiments show that the proposed unsupervised algorithm achieves 99.4% F1 score for sentence alignment, and the translation model achieves 26.95 BLEU from ancient to contemporary, and 36.34 BLEU from contemporary to ancient.

cs.CL↗

Stock Trading Volume Prediction with Dual-Process Meta-Learning

Volume prediction is one of the fundamental objectives in the Fintech area, which is helpful for many downstream tasks, e.g., algorithmic trading. Previous methods mostly learn a universal model for different stocks. However, this kind of practice omits the specific characteristics of individual stocks by applying the same set of parameters for different stocks. On the other hand, learning different models for each stock would face data sparsity or cold start problems for many stocks with small capitalization. To take advantage of the data scale and the various characteristics of individual stocks, we propose a dual-process meta-learning method that treats the prediction of each stock as one task under the meta-learning framework. Our method can model the common pattern behind different stocks with a meta-learner, while modeling the specific pattern for each stock across time spans with stock-dependent parameters. Furthermore, we propose to mine the pattern of each stock in the form of a latent variable which is then used for learning the parameters for the prediction module. This makes the prediction procedure aware of the data pattern. Extensive experiments on volume predictions show that our method can improve the performance of various baseline models. Further analyses testify the effectiveness of our proposed meta-learning framework.

q-fin.TR↗

Density of mode-locking property for quasi-periodically forced Arnold circle maps

We show that the mode-locking region of the family of quasi-periodically forced Arnold circle maps with a topologically generic forcing function is dense. This gives a rigorous verification of certain numerical observations in \cite{DGO} for such forcing functions. More generally, under some general conditions on the base map, we show the density of the mode-locking property among dynamically forced maps (defined in \cite{Zha}) equipped with a topology that is much stronger than the $C^0$ topology, compatible with smooth fiber maps. For quasi-periodic base maps, our result generalizes the main results in \cite{ABD, WZJ, Zha}.

math.DS↗

Risk-Aware Model Predictive Path Integral Control Using Conditional Value-at-Risk

In this paper, we present a novel Model Predictive Control method for autonomous robots subject to arbitrary forms of uncertainty. The proposed Risk-Aware Model Predictive Path Integral (RA-MPPI) control utilizes the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) measure to generate optimal control actions for safety-critical robotic applications. Different from most existing Stochastic MPCs and CVaR optimization methods that linearize the original dynamics and formulate control tasks as convex programs, the proposed method directly uses the original dynamics without restricting the form of the cost functions or the noise. We apply the novel RA-MPPI controller to an autonomous vehicle to perform aggressive driving maneuvers in cluttered environments. Our simulations and experiments show that the proposed RA-MPPI controller can achieve about the same lap time with significantly fewer collisions compared to the baseline MPPI controller. The proposed controller performs on-line computation at an update frequency of up to 80Hz, utilizing modern Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to multi-thread the generation of trajectories as well as the CVaR values.

cs.RO↗