Title
Topic
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Function Vectors in Large Language Models
“We report the presence of a simple neural mechanism that represents an input-output function as a vector within autoregressive transformer language models (LMs). Using causal mediation analysis on a diverse range of in-context-learning (ICL) tasks, we find that a small number attention heads transport a compact representation of the demonstrated task, which we call a function vector (FV). … We test FVs across a range of tasks, models and layers and find strong causal effects across settings in middle layers.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ArXiv.
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‘The Effects of Computational Resources on Flaky Tests’
“Flaky tests are tests that nondeterministically pass and fail in unchanged code. These tests can be detrimental to developers’ productivity. Particularly when tests run in continuous integration environments, the tests may be competing for access to limited computational resources (CPUs, memory etc.) and we hypothesize that resource (in)availability may be a significant factor in the failure rate of flaky tests. We present the first assessment of the impact that computational resources have on flaky tests, including a total of 52 projects written in Java, JavaScript and Python and 27 different resource configurations.” Find the paper and authors list at ArXiv.
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‘Graph-SCP: Accelerating Set Cover Problems With Graph Neural Networks’
“Machine learning (ML) approaches are increasingly being used to accelerate combinatorial optimization (CO) problems. We look specifically at the Set Cover Problem (SCP) and propose Graph-SCP, a graph neural network method that can augment existing optimization solvers by learning to identify a much smaller sub-problem that contains the solution space. We evaluate the performance of Graph-SCP on synthetic weighted and unweighted SCP instances with diverse problem characteristics and complexities, and on instances from the OR Library, a canonical benchmark for SCP.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ArXiv.
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To combat counterfeiting, organizations must employ a ‘multilayered strategy’
Anand Nair, professor of supply chain and information management in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, writes — with Thomas Choi and Robert Handfield — about the “counterfeiting epidemic” affecting many companies, “whether their leaders know it or not.” Combating this crisis, they write, “works best with a multilayered strategy encompassing diverse methods and engaging the entire organization and its partners.” This strategy includes “routinely keeping tabs on contract manufacturers and charting how products move through the supply chain … scoping out what is for sale in consumer markets, deploying covert markings, reviewing warranty claims, educating customers and partnering with key…
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‘Biochemical Activity of 17 Cancer-Associated Variants of DNA Polymerase Kappa Predicted by Electrostatic Properties’
“DNA damage and repair have been widely studied in relation to cancer and therapeutics. Y-family DNA polymerases can bypass DNA lesions, which may result from external or internal DNA damaging agents, including some chemotherapy agents. Overexpression of the Y-family polymerase human pol kappa can result in tumorigenesis and drug resistance in cancer. This report describes the use of computational tools to predict the effects of single nucleotide polymorphism variants on pol kappa activity.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Chemical Research in Toxicology.
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‘Linguistic Illusions Guide Eye Movement: Evidence From Doubling’
“Across languages, certain phonological patterns are preferred to others (e.g., blog > lbog). But whether such preferences arise from abstract linguistic constraints or sensorimotor pressures is controversial. We address this debate by examining the constraints on doubling (e.g., slaflaf, generally, XX). Doubling demonstrably elicits conflicting responses (aversion or preference), depending on the linguistic level of analysis (phonology vs. morphology). Since the stimulus remains unchanged, the shifting responses imply abstract constraints. Here, we ask whether these constraints apply online, in eye movements.” Find the paper and full list of authors in the Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.
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‘Hyper-cores Promote Localization and Efficient Seeding in Higher-Order Processes’
“Going beyond networks, to include higher-order interactions of arbitrary sizes, is a major step to better describe complex systems. In the resulting hypergraph representation, tools to identify structures and central nodes are scarce. We consider the decomposition of a hypergraph in hyper-cores, subsets of nodes connected by at least a certain number of hyperedges of at least a certain size. We show that this provides a fingerprint for data described by hypergraphs and suggests a novel notion of centrality, the hypercoreness.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Nature Communications.
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Northeastern welcomes researchers from around the globe for Genome Interpretation Workshop
“After years of involvement with the Critical Assessment of Genome Interpretation (CAGI), and after co-chairing the group’s most recent conference in 2022, Predrag Radivojac, professor of computer science and associate dean of research, finally got his chance to welcome the group to Boston and to Northeastern. Beginning on Friday, September 29 and continuing through the weekend, nearly 100 computational genomics and biomedical researchers flocked to the top floor of Northeastern’s East Village to catch up on the latest research and evaluate the challenges that remain.”
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‘Recent Advances in the Neuroscience of Spontaneous and Off-Task Thought: Implications for Mental Health’
“People spend a remarkable 30–50% of their awake life thinking about something other than what they are currently doing. These experiences of being ‘off-task’ can be described as spontaneous thought when mental dynamics are relatively flexible. Here we review recent neuroscience developments in this area and consider implications for mental well-being and illness. We provide updated overviews of the roles of the default mode network and large-scale network dynamics and we discuss emerging candidate mechanisms involving hippocampal memory (sharp-wave ripples, replay) and neuromodulatory (noradrenergic and serotonergic) systems.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Nature Mental Health.
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‘DNA Damage Alters Binding Conformations of E. coli Single-Stranded DNA-Binding Protein’
“Single-stranded DNA-binding proteins (SSBs) are essential cellular components, binding to transiently exposed regions of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) with high affinity and sequence non-specificity to coordinate DNA repair and replication. … We introduce non-canonical DNA bases that mimic naturally occurring DNA damage, synthetic abasic sites, as well as a non-DNA linker into our experimental constructs at sites predicted to interact with [Escherichia coli SSB (EcSSB)]. … Changes in the binding and cooperative behaviors of EcSSB across these constructs can inform how genomic repair and replication processes may change as environmental damage accumulates in DNA.” Find the paper and authors list at…
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Professor Analia Albuja receives SAGE Emerging Scholar Award for work on identities ‘that don’t neatly fit’ society’s expectations
Assistant professor of psychology Analia Albuja is among a cohort of eight scientists who have received a SAGE Emerging Scholar Award. Her work focuses on belonging, social identity and how subjects assert their identities in different situations.
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‘Quantum Metric Nonlinear Hall Effect in a Topological Antiferromagnetic Heterostructure’
“Quantum geometry in condensed-matter physics has two components: the real part quantum metric and the imaginary part Berry curvature. Whereas the effects of Berry curvature have been observed through phenomena such as the quantum Hall effect in two-dimensional electron gases and the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in ferromagnets, the quantum metric has rarely been explored. Here, we report a nonlinear Hall effect induced by the quantum metric dipole. … Our results open the door to discovering quantum metric responses predicted theoretically and pave the way for applications that bridge nonlinear electronics with AFM spintronics.” Find the paper and authors list…
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‘The Apocalyptic Nature of Rivalry Violence and the Need for a New Research Agenda’
Claudio Lanza, assistant professor in international Relations and sociology at Northeastern University London, gave a talk on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. The talk was hosted at the Brudnick Center for Violence and Conflict.
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Ravinder Dahiya selected as IEEE Division X Director-Elect
ECE Professor Ravinder Dahiya was elected as IEEE Division X Director-Elect for 2024. Division X comprises the following societies and councils: –IEEE Computational Intelligence Society –IEEE Control Systems Society –IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society –IEEE Photonics Society –IEEE Robotics and Automation Society –IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society –IEEE Systems Council –IEEE Sensors Council
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‘Hypodescent or Ingroup Overexclusion?: Children’s and Adults’ Racial Categorization of Ambiguous Black/White Biracial Faces’
“Two processes describe racially ambiguous Black/White Biracial categorization — the one-drop rule, or hypodescent, whereby racially ambiguous people are categorized as members of their socially subordinated racial group (i.e., Black/White Biracial faces categorized as Black) and the ingroup overexclusion effect, whereby racially ambiguous people are categorized as members of a salient outgroup, regardless of the group’s status. Without developmental research with racially diverse samples, it is unclear when these categorization patterns emerge. … Results suggest the ingroup overexclusion effect is present across populations early in development and persists into adulthood.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Dev…
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‘Effects of (−)-MBP … on Brain Activity: A phMRI Study on Awake Mice’
“A novel serotonin ligand (−)-MBP was developed for the treatment of schizophrenia. … The multi-functional activity of this novel drug candidate was characterized using pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging. It was hypothesized (−)-MBP would affect activity in brain areas associated with sensory perception. … BOLD functional imaging was used to follow changes in global brain activity. Data for each treatment were registered to a 3D MRI mouse brain atlas providing site-specific information on 132 different brain areas. There was a dose-dependent decrease in positive BOLD signal in numerous brain regions.” Find the paper and authors list at Pharmacology Research & Perspectives.
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‘Assessing the Potential for the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) Mission for Constituent Flux Estimations’
“The recently launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite will simultaneously measure river surface water widths, elevations, and slopes. These novel observations combined with assumptions for unobserved bathymetry and roughness enable the derivation of river discharge. … Here, we present how best to use SWOT data when it becomes live, including consideration of how best to accommodate or utilize the irregular flyover frequency of SWOT as it intersects with river reaches.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Frontiers in Earth Science.
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‘Bridging the Gap Between Collective Motility and Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transitions Through the Active Finite Voronoi Model’
“We introduce an active version of the recently proposed finite Voronoi model of epithelial tissue. The resultant Active Finite Voronoi (AFV) model enables the study of both confluent and non-confluent geometries and transitions between them, in the presence of active cells. Our study identifies six distinct phases, characterized by aggregation-segregation, dynamical jamming-unjamming, and epithelial-mesenchymal transitions (EMT), thereby extending the behavior beyond that observed in previously studied vertex-based models.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Soft Matter.
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Teaching AI to see in 3D: How Northeastern researchers are revolutionizing the field of computer vision
Associate professor of electrical and computer engineering Sarah Ostadabbas, with Ph.D. students Le Jiang and Zhouping Wang, is developing a computer vision algorithm that can estimate three-dimensional human movement — in real time — from livestreamed, two-dimensional video sources.
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‘COSMOS-Web: An Overview of the JWST Cosmic Origins Survey’
“We present the survey design, implementation and outlook for COSMOS-Web, a 255 hr treasury program conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope. … We anticipate COSMOS-Web’s legacy value to reach far beyond [its] scientific goals, touching many other areas of astrophysics, such as the identification of the first direct collapse black hole candidates, ultracool subdwarf stars in the Galactic halo and possibly the identification of z > 10 pair-instability supernovae. In this paper we provide an overview of the survey’s key measurements, specifications, goals and prospects for new discovery.” Find the paper and full list of authors at The Astrophysical…
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‘Altered Eye Movements During Reading With Simulated Central and Peripheral Visual Field Defects’
“Although foveal vision provides fine spatial information, parafoveal and peripheral vision are also known to be important for efficient reading behaviors. Here we systematically investigate how different types and sizes of visual field defects affect the way visual information is acquired via eye movements during reading. … Our results showed differential impacts of central and peripheral vision loss on reading behaviors while lending further support for the importance of foveal and parafoveal vision in reading. These apparently deviated oculomotor behaviors may … reflect optimal reading strategies to compensate for the loss of visual information.” Find the paper and authors list…
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‘Shotgun … Synthesis Approach Enables the Discovery of Small-Molecule Inhibitors Against Pathogenic Free-Living Amoeba Glucokinases’
“Pathogenic free-living amoebae (pFLA) can cause life-threatening central nervous system (CNS) infections and warrant the investigation of new chemical agents to combat the rise of infection from these pathogens. … Herein, we used our previously demonstrated multifragment kinetic target-guided synthesis (KTGS) screening strategy to identify inhibitors against pFLA glucokinases. … This work demonstrates the utility of KTGS to identify small-molecule binders for biological targets where resolved X-ray crystal structures are not readily accessible.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ACS Infectious Diseases.
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‘Mainstream News Articles Co-Shared With Fake News Buttress Misinformation Narratives’
“Most prior and current research examining misinformation spread on social media focuses on reports published by ‘fake’ news sources. These approaches fail to capture another potential form of misinformation with a much larger audience: factual news from mainstream sources (‘real’ news) repurposed to promote false or misleading narratives. … We find that certain articles from reliable outlets are shared by a disproportionate number of users who also shared fake news on Twitter. … We show that co-shared articles contain existing misinformation narratives at a significantly higher rate.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ArXiv.
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‘From 5G Sniffing to Harvesting Leakages of Privacy-Preserving Messengers’
“We present the first open-source tool capable of efficiently sniffing 5G control channels, 5GSniffer and demonstrate its potential to conduct attacks on users privacy. 5GSniffer builds on our analysis of the 5G RAN control channel exposing side-channel leakage. We note that decoding the 5G control channels is significantly more challenging than in LTE. … We devise a set of techniques to achieve real-time control channels sniffing (over three orders of magnitude faster than brute-forcing).” Find the paper and full list of authors at the 2023 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.