Context: Quantum software systems represent a new realm in software engineering, utilizing quantum bits (Qubits) and quantum gates (Qgates) to solve the complex problems more efficiently than classical counterparts . Agile software development approaches are considered to address many inherent challenges in quantum software development, but their effective integration remains unexplored Objective: This study investigates key causes of challenges that could hinders the adoption of traditional agile approaches in quantum software projects and develop an Agile Quantum Software Project Success Prediction Model (AQSSPM). Methodology: Firstly, w e identified 19 causes of challenging factors discussed in our previous study, which are potentially impacting agile quantum project success. Secondly, a survey was conducted to collect expert opinions on these causes and applied Genetic Algorithm (GA) with Na i ve Bayes Classifier (NBC) and Logistic Regression (LR) to develop the AQSSPM Results: Utilizing GA with NBC, project success probability improved from 53.17% to 99.68%, with cost reductions from 0.463% to 0.403%. Similarly, GA with LR increased success rates from 55.52% to 98.99%, and costs decreased from 0.496% to 0.409% after 100 iterati ons. Both methods result showed a strong positive correlation (rs=0.955) in causes ranking, with no significant difference between them (t=1.195, p=0.240>0.05). Conclusion: The AQSSPM highlights critical focus areas for efficiently and successfully implementing agile quantum projects considering the cost factor of a particular project
By providing external information to large language models (LLMs), tool augmentation (including retrieval augmentation) has emerged as a promising solution for addressing the limitations of LLMs' static parametric memory. However, how receptive are LLMs to such external evidence, especially when the evidence conflicts with their parametric memory? We present the first comprehensive and controlled investigation into the behavior of LLMs when encountering knowledge conflicts. We propose a systematic framework to elicit high-quality parametric memory from LLMs and construct the corresponding counter-memory, which enables us to conduct a series of controlled experiments. Our investigation reveals seemingly contradicting behaviors of LLMs. On the one hand, different from prior wisdom, we find that LLMs can be highly receptive to external evidence even when that conflicts with their parametric memory, given that the external evidence is coherent and convincing. On the other hand, LLMs also demonstrate a strong confirmation bias when the external evidence contains some information that is consistent with their parametric memory, despite being presented with conflicting evidence at the same time. These results pose important implications that are worth careful consideration for the further development and deployment of tool- and retrieval-augmented LLMs. Resources are available at //github.com/OSU-NLP-Group/LLM-Knowledge-Conflict.
The application of Large Language Models (LLMs) in software engineering, particularly in static analysis tasks, represents a paradigm shift in the field. In this paper, we investigate the role that current LLMs can play in improving callgraph analysis and type inference for Python programs. Using the PyCG, HeaderGen, and TypeEvalPy micro-benchmarks, we evaluate 26 LLMs, including OpenAI's GPT series and open-source models such as LLaMA. Our study reveals that LLMs show promising results in type inference, demonstrating higher accuracy than traditional methods, yet they exhibit limitations in callgraph analysis. This contrast emphasizes the need for specialized fine-tuning of LLMs to better suit specific static analysis tasks. Our findings provide a foundation for further research towards integrating LLMs for static analysis tasks.
In the realm of subject-driven text-to-image (T2I) generative models, recent developments like DreamBooth and BLIP-Diffusion have led to impressive results yet encounter limitations due to their intensive fine-tuning demands and substantial parameter requirements. While the low-rank adaptation (LoRA) module within DreamBooth offers a reduction in trainable parameters, it introduces a pronounced sensitivity to hyperparameters, leading to a compromise between parameter efficiency and the quality of T2I personalized image synthesis. Addressing these constraints, we introduce \textbf{\textit{DiffuseKronA}}, a novel Kronecker product-based adaptation module that not only significantly reduces the parameter count by 35\% and 99.947\% compared to LoRA-DreamBooth and the original DreamBooth, respectively, but also enhances the quality of image synthesis. Crucially, \textit{DiffuseKronA} mitigates the issue of hyperparameter sensitivity, delivering consistent high-quality generations across a wide range of hyperparameters, thereby diminishing the necessity for extensive fine-tuning. Furthermore, a more controllable decomposition makes \textit{DiffuseKronA} more interpretable and even can achieve up to a 50\% reduction with results comparable to LoRA-Dreambooth. Evaluated against diverse and complex input images and text prompts, \textit{DiffuseKronA} consistently outperforms existing models, producing diverse images of higher quality with improved fidelity and a more accurate color distribution of objects, all the while upholding exceptional parameter efficiency, thus presenting a substantial advancement in the field of T2I generative modeling. Our project page, consisting of links to the code, and pre-trained checkpoints, is available at \href{//diffusekrona.github.io/}{//diffusekrona.github.io/}.
Even though virtual testing of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) has been well recognized as essential for safety assessment, AV simulators are still undergoing active development. One particularly challenging question is to effectively include the Sensing and Perception (S&P) subsystem into the simulation loop. In this article, we define Perception Error Models (PEM), a virtual simulation component that can enable the analysis of the impact of perception errors on AV safety, without the need to model the sensors themselves. We propose a generalized data-driven procedure towards parametric modeling and evaluate it using Apollo, an open-source driving software, and nuScenes, a public AV dataset. Additionally, we implement PEMs in SVL, an open-source vehicle simulator. Furthermore, we demonstrate the usefulness of PEM-based virtual tests, by evaluating camera, LiDAR, and camera-LiDAR setups. Our virtual tests highlight limitations in the current evaluation metrics, and the proposed approach can help study the impact of perception errors on AV safety.
Federated learning encounters substantial challenges with heterogeneous data, leading to performance degradation and convergence issues. While considerable progress has been achieved in mitigating such an impact, the reliability aspect of federated models has been largely disregarded. In this study, we conduct extensive experiments to investigate the reliability of both generic and personalized federated models. Our exploration uncovers a significant finding: \textbf{federated models exhibit unreliability when faced with heterogeneous data}, demonstrating poor calibration on in-distribution test data and low uncertainty levels on out-of-distribution data. This unreliability is primarily attributed to the presence of biased projection heads, which introduce miscalibration into the federated models. Inspired by this observation, we propose the "Assembled Projection Heads" (APH) method for enhancing the reliability of federated models. By treating the existing projection head parameters as priors, APH randomly samples multiple initialized parameters of projection heads from the prior and further performs targeted fine-tuning on locally available data under varying learning rates. Such a head ensemble introduces parameter diversity into the deterministic model, eliminating the bias and producing reliable predictions via head averaging. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed APH method across three prominent federated benchmarks. Experimental results validate the efficacy of APH in model calibration and uncertainty estimation. Notably, APH can be seamlessly integrated into various federated approaches but only requires less than 30\% additional computation cost for 100$\times$ inferences within large models.
Image enhancement algorithms are very useful for real world computer vision tasks where image resolution is often physically limited by the sensor size. While state-of-the-art deep neural networks show impressive results for image enhancement, they often struggle to enhance real-world images. In this work, we tackle a real-world setting: inpainting of images from Dunhuang caves. The Dunhuang dataset consists of murals, half of which suffer from corrosion and aging. These murals feature a range of rich content, such as Buddha statues, bodhisattvas, sponsors, architecture, dance, music, and decorative patterns designed by different artists spanning ten centuries, which makes manual restoration challenging. We modify two different existing methods (CAR, HINet) that are based upon state-of-the-art (SOTA) super resolution and deblurring networks. We show that those can successfully inpaint and enhance these deteriorated cave paintings. We further show that a novel combination of CAR and HINet, resulting in our proposed inpainting network (ARIN), is very robust to external noise, especially Gaussian noise. To this end, we present a quantitative and qualitative comparison of our proposed approach with existing SOTA networks and winners of the Dunhuang challenge. One of the proposed methods HINet) represents the new state of the art and outperforms the 1st place of the Dunhuang Challenge, while our combination ARIN, which is robust to noise, is comparable to the 1st place. We also present and discuss qualitative results showing the impact of our method for inpainting on Dunhuang cave images.
Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) has emerged as a new frontier in the design of blockchain systems. The marriage between decentralization and finance gives the power to block producers (a.k.a., miners) not only to select and add transactions to the blockchain but, crucially, also to order them so as to extract as much financial gain as possible for themselves. Whilst this price may be unavoidable for the service provided by block producers, users of the chain may in the long run prefer to use less predatory systems. In this paper, we propose to make the MEV extraction rate part of the protocol design space. Our aim is to leverage this parameter to maintain a healthy balance between miners (who need to be compensated) and users (who need to feel encouraged to transact). Inspired by the principles introduced by EIP-1559 for transaction fees, we design a dynamic mechanism which updates the MEV extraction rate with the goal of stabilizing it at a target value. We analyse the evolution of this dynamic mechanism under various market conditions and provide formal guarantees about its long-term performance. Our results show that even when the system behavior is provably chaotic, the dynamics guarantee long-term liveness (survival) and robustness of the system. The main takeaway from our work is that the proposed system exhibits desirable behavior (near-optimal performance) even when it operates in out of equilibrium conditions that are often met in practice. Our work establishes, the first to our knowledge, dynamic framework for the integral problem of MEV sharing between extractors and users.
Photo-realistic avatar is a modern term referring to the digital asset that represents a human in computer graphic advance systems such as video games and simulation tools. These avatars utilize the advances in graphic technologies on both software and hardware aspects. While photorealistic avatars are increasingly used in industrial simulations, representing human factors such as human workers internal states, remains a challenge. This article addresses this issue by introducing the concept of MetaStates which are the digitization and representation of the psychophysiological states of a human worker in the digital world. The MetaStates influence the physical representation and performance of a digital human worker while performing a task. To demonstrate this concept the study presents a development of a photorealistic avatar which is integrated into a simulated environment and enhanced with a multi-level graphical representation of different psychophysiological states. This approach represents a major step forward in the use of digital humans for industrial simulations, allowing companies to better leverage the benefits of the Industrial Metaverse in their daily operations and simulations while keeping human workers at the center of the system.
Learning from noisy data has attracted much attention, where most methods focus on closed-set label noise. However, a more common scenario in the real world is the presence of both open-set and closed-set noise. Existing methods typically identify and handle these two types of label noise separately by designing a specific strategy for each type. However, in many real-world scenarios, it would be challenging to identify open-set examples, especially when the dataset has been severely corrupted. Unlike the previous works, we explore how models behave when faced with open-set examples, and find that \emph{a part of open-set examples gradually get integrated into certain known classes}, which is beneficial for the separation among known classes. Motivated by the phenomenon, we propose a novel two-step contrastive learning method CECL (Class Expansion Contrastive Learning) which aims to deal with both types of label noise by exploiting the useful information of open-set examples. Specifically, we incorporate some open-set examples into closed-set classes to enhance performance while treating others as delimiters to improve representative ability. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets with diverse label noise demonstrate the effectiveness of CECL.
Entity Alignment (EA) is vital for integrating diverse knowledge graph (KG) data, playing a crucial role in data-driven AI applications. Traditional EA methods primarily rely on comparing entity embeddings, but their effectiveness is constrained by the limited input KG data and the capabilities of the representation learning techniques. Against this backdrop, we introduce ChatEA, an innovative framework that incorporates large language models (LLMs) to improve EA. To address the constraints of limited input KG data, ChatEA introduces a KG-code translation module that translates KG structures into a format understandable by LLMs, thereby allowing LLMs to utilize their extensive background knowledge to improve EA accuracy. To overcome the over-reliance on entity embedding comparisons, ChatEA implements a two-stage EA strategy that capitalizes on LLMs' capability for multi-step reasoning in a dialogue format, thereby enhancing accuracy while preserving efficiency. Our experimental results affirm ChatEA's superior performance, highlighting LLMs' potential in facilitating EA tasks.