The rapid adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) has transformed modern software development by enabling automated code generation at scale. While these systems improve productivity, they introduce new challenges for software governance, accountability, and compliance. Existing research primarily focuses on distinguishing machine-generated code from human-written code; however, many practical scenarios--such as vulnerability triage, incident investigation, and licensing audits--require identifying which LLM produced a given code snippet. In this paper, we study the problem of model-level code attribution, which aims to determine the source LLM responsible for generated code. Although attribution is challenging, differences in training data, architectures, alignment strategies, and decoding mechanisms introduce model-dependent stylistic and structural variations that serve as generative fingerprints. Leveraging this observation, we propose the Disentangled Code Attribution Network (DCAN), which separates Source-Agnostic semantic information from Source-Specific stylistic representations. Through a contrastive learning objective, DCAN isolates discriminative model-dependent signals while preserving task semantics, enabling multi-class attribution across models and programming languages. To support systematic evaluation, we construct the first large-scale benchmark dataset comprising code generated by four widely used LLMs (DeepSeek, Claude, Qwen, and ChatGPT) across four programming languages (Python, Java, C, and Go). Experimental results demonstrate that DCAN achieves reliable attribution performance across diverse settings, highlighting the feasibility of model-level provenance analysis in software engineering contexts. The dataset and implementation are publicly available at https://github.com/mtt500/DCAN.

Density aggregation is a central problem in machine learning, for instance when combining predictions from a Deep Ensemble. The choice of aggregation remains an open question with two commonly proposed approaches being linear pooling (probability averaging) and geometric pooling (logit averaging). In this work, we address this question by studying the normalized generalized mean of order $r \in \mathbb{R} \cup \{-\infty,+\infty\}$ through the lens of log-likelihood, the standard evaluation criterion in machine learning. This provides a unifying aggregation formalism and shows different optimal configurations for different situations. We show that the regime $r \in [0,1]$ is the only range ensuring systematic improvements relative to individual distributions, thereby providing a principled justification for the reliability and widespread practical use of linear ($r=1$) and geometric ($r=0$) pooling. In contrast, we show that aggregation rules with $r \notin [0,1]$ may fail to provide consistent gains with explicit counterexamples. Finally, we corroborate our theoretical findings with empirical evaluations using Deep Ensembles on image and text classification benchmarks.

Theoretical and applied research into privacy encompasses an incredibly broad swathe of differing approaches, emphasis and aims. This work introduces a new quantitative notion of privacy that is both contextual and specific. We argue that it provides a more meaningful notion of privacy than the widely utilised framework of differential privacy and a more explicit and rigorous formulation than what is commonly used in statistical disclosure theory. Our definition relies on concepts inherent to standard Bayesian decision theory, while departing from it in several important respects. In particular, the party controlling the release of sensitive information should make disclosure decisions from the prior viewpoint, rather than conditional on the data, even when the data is itself observed. Illuminating toy examples and computational methods are discussed in high detail in order to highlight the specificities of the method.

Log data are essential for intrusion detection and forensic investigations. However, manual log analysis is tedious due to high data volumes, heterogeneous event formats, and unstructured messages. Even though many automated methods for log analysis exist, they usually still rely on domain-specific configurations such as expert-defined detection rules, handcrafted log parsers, or manual feature-engineering. Crucially, the level of automation of conventional methods is limited due to their inability to semantically understand logs and explain their underlying causes. In contrast, Large Language Models enable domain- and format-agnostic interpretation of system logs and security alerts. Unfortunately, research on this topic remains challenging, because publicly available and labeled data sets covering a broad range of attack techniques are scarce. To address this gap, we introduce the Cyber Attack Manifestation Log Data Set (CAM-LDS), comprising seven attack scenarios that cover 81 distinct techniques across 13 tactics and collected from 18 distinct sources within a fully open-source and reproducible test environment. We extract log events that directly result from attack executions to facilitate analysis of manifestations concerning command observability, event frequencies, performance metrics, and intrusion detection alerts. We further present an illustrative case study utilizing an LLM to process the CAM-LDS. The results indicate that correct attack techniques are predicted perfectly for approximately one third of attack steps and adequately for another third, highlighting the potential of LLM-based log interpretation and utility of our data set.

Deep Neural Networks are powerful tools for solving machine learning problems, but their training often involves dense and costly parameter updates. In this work, we use a novel Max-Plus neural architecture in which classical addition and multiplication are replaced with maximum and summation operations respectively. This is a promising architecture in terms of interpretability, but its training is challenging. A particular feature is that this algebraic structure naturally induces sparsity in the subgradients, as only neurons that contribute to the maximum affect the loss. However, standard backpropagation fails to exploit this sparsity, leading to unnecessary computations. In this work, we focus on the minimization of the worst sample loss which transfers this sparsity to the optimization loss. To address this, we propose a sparse subgradient algorithm that explicitly exploits the algebraic sparsity. By tailoring the optimization procedure to the non-smooth nature of Max-Plus models, our method achieves more efficient updates while retaining theoretical guarantees. This highlights a principled path toward bridging algebraic structure and scalable learning.

Future collider experiments require unprecedented precision in measurements of Higgs, electroweak, and flavour observables, placing stringent demands on event reconstruction. The achievable precision on Higgs couplings scales directly with the resolution on visible final state particles and their invariant masses. Current particle flow algorithms rely on detector specific clustering, limiting flexibility during detector design. Here we present an end-to-end global event reconstruction approach that maps charged particle tracks and calorimeter and muon hits directly to particle level objects. The method combines geometric algebra transformer networks with object condensation based clustering, followed by dedicated networks for particle identification and energy regression. Our approach is benchmarked on fully simulated electron positron collisions at FCC-ee using the CLD detector concept. It outperforms the state-of-the-art rule-based algorithm by 10--20\% in relative reconstruction efficiency, achieves up to two orders of magnitude reduction in fake-particle rates for charged hadrons, and improves visible energy and invariant mass resolution by 22\%. By decoupling reconstruction performance from detector-specific tuning, this framework enables rapid iteration during the detector design phase of future collider experiments.

Quantum measurements are the means by which we recover messages encoded into quantum states. They are at the forefront of quantum hypothesis testing, wherein the goal is to perform an optimal measurement for arriving at a correct conclusion. Mathematically, a measurement operator is Hermitian with eigenvalues in [0,1]. By noticing that this constraint on each eigenvalue is the same as that imposed on fermions by the Pauli exclusion principle, we interpret every eigenmode of a measurement operator as an independent effective fermionic mode. Under this perspective, various objective functions in quantum hypothesis testing can be viewed as the total expected energy associated with these fermionic occupation numbers. By instead fixing a temperature and minimizing the total expected fermionic free energy, we find that optimal measurements for these modified objective functions are Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements, wherein their eigenvalues are specified by Fermi-Dirac distributions. In the low-temperature limit, their performance closely approximates that of optimal measurements for quantum hypothesis testing, and we show that their parameters can be learned by classical or hybrid quantum-classical optimization algorithms. This leads to a new quantum machine-learning model, termed Fermi-Dirac machines, consisting of parameterized Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements-an alternative to quantum Boltzmann machines based on thermal states. Beyond hypothesis testing, we show how general semidefinite optimization problems can be solved using this approach, leading to a novel paradigm for semidefinite optimization on quantum computers, in which the goal is to implement thermal measurements rather than prepare thermal states. Finally, we propose quantum algorithms for implementing Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements, and we also propose second-order hybrid quantum-classical optimization algorithms.

For four decades, AIED research has rested on what we term the Sedentary Assumption: the unexamined design commitment to a stationary learner seated before a screen. Mobile learning and museum guides have moved learners into physical space, and context-aware systems have delivered location-triggered content -- yet these efforts predominantly cast AI in the role of information-de-livery tool rather than epistemic partner. We map this gap through a 2 x 2 matrix (AI Role x Learning Environment) and identify an undertheorized intersection: the configuration in which AI serves as an epistemic teammate during unstruc-tured, place-bound field inquiry and learning is assessed through trajectory rather than product. To fill it, we propose Field Atlas, a framework grounded in embod-ied, embedded, enactive, and extended (4E) cognition, active inference, and dual coding theory that shifts AIED's guiding metaphor from instruction to sensemak-ing. The architecture pairs volitional photography with immediate voice reflec-tion, constrains AI to Socratic provocation rather than answer delivery, and ap-plies Epistemic Trajectory Modeling (ETM) to represent field learning as a con-tinuous trajectory through conjoined physical-epistemic space. We demonstrate the framework through a museum scenario and argue that the resulting trajecto-ries -- bound to a specific body, place, and time -- constitute process-based evi-dence structurally resistant to AI fabrication, offering a new assessment paradigm and reorienting AIED toward embodied, dialogic human-AI sensemaking in the wild.

We propose Fluid Logic, a paradigm in which modal logical reasoning, temporal, epistemic, doxastic, deontic, is lifted from discrete Kripke structures to continuous manifolds via Neural Stochastic Differential Equations (Neural SDEs). Each type of modal operator is backed by a dedicated Neural SDE, and nested formulas compose these SDEs in a single differentiable graph. A key instantiation is Logic-Informed Neural Networks (LINNs): analogous to Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs), LINNs embed modal logical formulas such as ($\Box$ bounded) and ($\Diamond$ visits\_lobe) directly into the training loss, guiding neural networks to produce solutions that are structurally consistent with prescribed logical properties, without requiring knowledge of the governing equations. The resulting framework, Continuous Modal Logical Neural Networks (CMLNNs), yields several key properties: (i) stochastic diffusion prevents quantifier collapse ($\Box$ and $\Diamond$ differ), unlike deterministic ODEs; (ii) modal operators are entropic risk measures, sound with respect to risk-based semantics with explicit Monte Carlo concentration guarantees; (iii)SDE-induced accessibility provides structural correspondence with classical modal axioms; (iv) parameterizing accessibility through dynamics reduces memory from quadratic in world count to linear in parameters. Three case studies demonstrate that Fluid Logic and LINNs can guide neural networks to produce consistent solutions across diverse domains: epistemic/doxastic logic (multi-robot hallucination detection), temporal logic (recovering the Lorenz attractor geometry from logical constraints alone), and deontic logic (learning safe confinement dynamics from a logical specification).

Aggregate Programming (AP) is a paradigm for programming the collective behaviour of sets of distributed devices, possibly situated at the network far edge, by relying on asynchronous proximity-based interactions. The eXchange Calculus (XC), a recently proposed foundational model for AP, is essentially a typed lambda calculus extended with an operator (the exchange operator) providing an implicit communication mechanism between neighbour devices. This paper provides a gentle introduction to XC and to its implementation as a C++ library, called FCPP. The FCPP library and toolchain has been mainly developed at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Turin, where Stefano Berardi spent most of his academic career conducting outstanding research about logical foundation of computer science and transmitting his passion for research to students and young researchers, often exploiting typed lambda calculi. An FCCP program is essentially a typed lambda term, and FCPP has been used to write code that has been deployed on devices at the far edge of the network, including rovers and (soon) Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs); hence the title of the paper.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools are increasingly present in higher education, yet their adoption has been largely student-driven, requiring instructors to respond to technologies already embedded in classroom practices. While some faculty have embraced GenAI for pedagogical purposes such as content generation, assessment support, and curriculum design, others approach these tools with caution, citing concerns about student learning, assessment validity, and academic integrity. Understanding faculty perspectives is therefore essential for informing effective pedagogical strategies and institutional policies. In this paper, we present findings from a focus group study with 29 STEM faculty members at a large public university in the United States. We examine how faculty integrate GenAI into their courses, the benefits and challenges they perceive for student learning, and the institutional support they identify as necessary for effective and responsible adoption. Our findings highlight key patterns in how STEM faculty engage with GenAI, reflecting both active adoption and cautious use. Faculty described a range of pedagogical applications alongside concerns about student learning, assessment, and academic integrity. Overall, the results suggest that effective integration of GenAI in higher education requires rethinking assessment, pedagogy, and institutional governance in addition to technical adoption.

Link prediction models are increasingly used to recommend interactions in evolving networks, yet their impact on network structure is typically assessed from static snapshots. In particular, observed homophily conflates intrinsic interaction tendencies with amplification effects induced by network dynamics and algorithmic feedback. We propose a temporal framework based on multivariate Hawkes processes that disentangles these two sources and introduce an instantaneous bias measure derived from interaction intensities, capturing current reinforcement dynamics beyond cumulative metrics. We provide a theoretical characterization of the stability and convergence of the induced dynamics, and experiments show that the proposed measure reliably reflects algorithmic feedback effects across different link prediction strategies.

Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a promising approach for next-generation wireless networks, where online exploration is unsafe and large amounts of operational data can be reused across the model lifecycle. However, the behavior of offline RL algorithms under genuinely stochastic dynamics -- inherent to wireless systems due to fading, noise, and traffic mobility -- remains insufficiently understood. We address this gap by evaluating Bellman-based (Conservative Q-Learning), sequence-based (Decision Transformers), and hybrid (Critic-Guided Decision Transformers) offline RL methods in an open-access stochastic telecom environment (mobile-env). Our results show that Conservative Q-Learning consistently produces more robust policies across different sources of stochasticity, making it a reliable default choice in lifecycle-driven AI management frameworks. Sequence-based methods remain competitive and can outperform Bellman-based approaches when sufficient high-return trajectories are available. These findings provide practical guidance for offline RL algorithm selection in AI-driven network control pipelines, such as O-RAN and future 6G functions, where robustness and data availability are key operational constraints.

As LLM-driven agents begin to autonomously navigate the web, their ability to interpret and respond to manipulative interface design becomes critical. A fundamental question that emerges is: can such agents reliably recognize patterns of friction, misdirection, and coercion in interface design (i.e., dark patterns)? We study this question in a setting where the workflows are consequential: website portals associated with the submission of CCPA-related data rights requests. These portals operationalize statutory rights, but they are implemented as interactive interfaces whose design can be structured to facilitate, burden, or subtly discourage the exercise of those rights. We design and deploy an LLM-driven auditing agent capable of end-to-end traversal of rights-request workflows, structured evidence gathering, and classification of potential dark patterns. Across a set of 456 data broker websites, we evaluate: (1) the ability of the agent to consistently locate and complete request flows, (2) the reliability and reproducibility of its dark pattern classifications, and (3) the conditions under which it fails or produces poor judgments. Our findings characterize both the feasibility and the limitations of using LLM-driven agents for scalable dark pattern auditing.

Software-hardware co-design is essential for optimizing in-memory computing (IMC) hardware accelerators for neural networks. However, most existing optimization frameworks target a single workload, leading to highly specialized hardware designs that do not generalize well across models and applications. In contrast, practical deployment scenarios require a single IMC platform that can efficiently support multiple neural network workloads. This work presents a joint hardware-workload co-optimization framework based on an optimized evolutionary algorithm for designing generalized IMC accelerator architectures. By explicitly capturing cross-workload trade-offs rather than optimizing for a single model, the proposed approach significantly reduces the performance gap between workload-specific and generalized IMC designs. The framework is evaluated on both RRAM- and SRAM-based IMC architectures, demonstrating strong robustness and adaptability across diverse design scenarios. Compared to baseline methods, the optimized designs achieve energy-delay-area product (EDAP) reductions of up to 76.2% and 95.5% when optimizing across a small set (4 workloads) and a large set (9 workloads), respectively. The source code of the framework is available at https://github.com/OlgaKrestinskaya/JointHardwareWorkloadOptimizationIMC.

We consider stochastic non-stationary linear bandits where the linear parameter connecting contexts to the reward changes over time. Existing algorithms in this setting localize the policy by gradually discarding or down-weighting past data, effectively shrinking the time horizon over which learning can occur. However, in many settings historical data may still carry partial information about the reward model. We propose to leverage such data while adapting to changes, by assuming the reward model decomposes into stationary and non-stationary components. Based on this assumption, we introduce ISD-linUCB, an algorithm that uses past data to learn invariances in the reward model and subsequently exploits them to improve online performance. We show both theoretically and empirically that leveraging invariance reduces the problem dimensionality, yielding significant regret improvements in fast-changing environments when sufficient historical data is available.

Cardiac arrhythmogenesis is governed by complex electromechanical interactions that are not directly observable in vivo, motivating the development of non-invasive computational approaches for reconstructing three-dimensional activation dynamics. We present a physics-informed neural network framework for recovering cardiac activation patterns, active tension propagation, deformation fields, and hydrostatic pressure from measurable deformation data in simplified left ventricular geometries. Our approach integrates nonlinear anisotropic constitutive modeling, heterogeneous fiber orientation, weak formulations of the governing mechanics, and finite-element-based loss functions to embed physical constraints directly into training. We demonstrate that the proposed framework accurately reconstructs spatiotemporal activation dynamics under varying levels of measurement noise and reduced spatial resolution, while preserving global propagation patterns and activation timing. By coupling mechanistic modeling with data-driven inference, this method establishes a pathway toward patient-specific, non-invasive reconstruction of cardiac activation, with potential applications in digital phenotyping and computational support for arrhythmia assessment.

Development of modern antennas is a cognitive process that intertwines experience-driven determination of topology and tuning of its parameters to fulfill the performance specifications. Alternatively, the task can be formulated as an optimization problem so as to reduce reliance of geometry selection on engineering insight. In this work, a bi-stage framework for automatic generation of antennas is considered. The method determines free-form topology through optimization of interconnections between components (so-called pixels) that constitute the radiator. Here, the process involves global optimization of connections between pixels followed by fine-tuning of the resulting topology using a surrogate-assisted local-search algorithm to fulfill the design re-quirements. The approach has been demonstrated based on two case studies concerning development of broadband and dual-band monopole antennas.

Design of antenna structures for Internet of Things (IoT) applications is a challenging problem. Contemporary radiators are often subject to a number of electric and/or radiation-related requirements, but also constraints imposed by specifics of IoT systems and/or intended operational environments. Conventional approaches to antenna design typically involve manual development of topology intertwined with its tuning. Although proved useful, the approach is prone to errors and engineering bias. Alternatively, geometries can be generated and optimized without supervision of the designer. The process can be controlled by suitable algorithms to determine and then adjust the antenna geometry according to the specifications. Unfortunately, automatic design of IoT radiators is associated with challenges such as determination of desirable geometries or high optimization cost. In this work, a variable-fidelity framework for performance-oriented development of free-form antennas represented using the generic simulation models is proposed. The method employs a surrogate-assisted classifier capable of identifying a suitable radiator topology from a set of automatically generated (and stored for potential re-use) candidate designs. The obtained geometry is then subject to a bi-stage tuning performed using a gradient-based optimization engine. The presented framework is demonstrated based on six numerical experiments concerning unsupervised development of bandwidth-enhanced patch antennas dedicated to work within 5 GHz to 6 GHz and 6 GHz to 7 GHz bands, respectively. Extensive benchmarks of the method, as well as the generated topologies are also performed.

Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) represent the gold standard for causal inference yet remain a scarce resource. While large-scale observational data is often available, it is utilized only for retrospective fusion, and remains discarded in prospective trial design due to bias concerns. We argue this "tabula rasa" data acquisition strategy is fundamentally inefficient. In this work, we propose Active Residual Learning, a new paradigm that leverages the observational model as a foundational prior. This approach shifts the experimental focus from learning target causal quantities from scratch to efficiently estimating the residuals required to correct observational bias. To operationalize this, we introduce the R-Design framework. Theoretically, we establish two key advantages: (1) a structural efficiency gap, proving that estimating smooth residual contrasts admits strictly faster convergence rates than reconstructing full outcomes; and (2) information efficiency, where we quantify the redundancy in standard parameter-based acquisition (e.g., BALD), demonstrating that such baselines waste budget on task-irrelevant nuisance uncertainty. We propose R-EPIG (Residual Expected Predictive Information Gain), a unified criterion that directly targets the causal estimand, minimizing residual uncertainty for estimation or clarifying decision boundaries for policy. Experiments on synthetic and semi-synthetic benchmarks demonstrate that R-Design significantly outperforms baselines, confirming that repairing a biased model is far more efficient than learning one from scratch.

Shared-account usage is common on streaming and e-commerce platforms, where multiple users share one account. Existing shared-account sequential recommendation (SSR) methods often assume a fixed number of latent users per account, limiting their ability to adapt to diverse sharing patterns and reducing recommendation accuracy. Recent latent reasoning technique applied in sequential recommendation (SR) generate intermediate embeddings from the user embedding (e.g, last item embedding) to uncover users' potential interests, which inspires us to treat the problem of inferring the number of latent users as generating a series of intermediate embeddings, shifting from inferring preferences behind user to inferring the users behind account. However, the last item cannot be directly used for reasoning in SSR, as it can only represent the behavior of the most recent latent user, rather than the collective behavior of the entire account. To address this, we propose DisenReason, a two-stage reasoning method tailored to SSR. DisenReason combines behavior disentanglement stage from frequency-domain perspective to create a collective and unified account behavior representation, which serves as a pivot for latent user reasoning stage to infer the number of users behind the account. Experiments on four benchmark datasets show that DisenReason consistently outperforms all state-of-the-art baselines across four benchmark datasets, achieving relative improvements of up to 12.56\% in MRR@5 and 6.06\% in Recall@20.

Scientific discovery still relies heavily on the manual efforts of individual researchers, leading to limited exploration, redundant trials, and reduced reproducibility. Human-participant data analysis competitions generate diverse approaches, yet fluctuations in participation and the lack of independent repetitions show that parallel exploration alone is insufficient for achieving reliable scientific inquiry. As advanced AI agents based on large language models (LLMs) increasingly perform analytical tasks, relying on a single highly capable agent is unlikely to overcome these structural limitations. Recent work has begun to explore how multiple LLM-based agents can collaborate or compete in scientific workflows-a growing trend we refer to as MA4Science. However, most existing MA4Science studies assume that all agents are controlled by a single organizational entity, limiting their ability to examine how institutional mechanisms-such as incentives, information sharing, and reproducibility-shape collective exploration among independently managed agents. To address this gap, we introduce MACC (Multi-Agent Collaborative Competition), an institutional architecture that integrates a blackboard-style shared scientific workspace with incentive mechanisms designed to encourage transparency, reproducibility, and exploration efficiency. MACC provides a testbed for studying how institutional design influences scalable and reliable multi-agent scientific exploration.

AI-driven analytics are increasingly crucial to data-centric decision-making. The practice of exporting data to machine learning runtimes incurs high overhead, limits robustness to data drift, and expands the attack surface, especially in multi-tenant, heterogeneous data systems. Integrating AI directly into database engines, while offering clear benefits, introduces challenges in managing joint query processing and model execution, optimizing end-to-end performance, coordinating execution under resource contention, and enforcing strong security and access-control guarantees. This paper discusses the challenges of joint DB-AI, or AIxDB, data management and query processing within AI-powered data systems. It presents various challenges that need to be addressed carefully, such as query optimization, execution scheduling, and distributed execution over heterogeneous hardware. Database components such as transaction management and access control need to be re-examined to support AI lifecycle management, mitigate data drift, and protect sensitive data from unauthorized AI operations. We present a design and preliminary results to demonstrate what may be key to the performance for serving AIxDB queries.

Most large-scale recommender systems follow a multi-stage cascade of retrieval, pre-ranking, ranking, and re-ranking. A key challenge at the pre-ranking stage arises from the heterogeneity of training instances sampled from coarse-grained retrieval results, fine-grained ranking signals, and exposure feedback. Our analysis reveals that prevailing pre-ranking methods, which indiscriminately mix heterogeneous samples, suffer from gradient conflicts: hard samples dominate training while easy ones remain underutilized, leading to suboptimal performance. We further show that the common practice of uniformly scaling model complexity across all samples is inefficient, as it overspends computation on easy cases and slows training without proportional gains. To address these limitations, this paper presents Heterogeneity-Aware Adaptive Pre-ranking (HAP), a unified framework that mitigates gradient conflicts through conflict-sensitive sampling coupled with tailored loss design, while adaptively allocating computational budgets across candidates. Specifically, HAP disentangles easy and hard samples, directing each subset along dedicated optimization paths. Building on this separation, it first applies lightweight models to all candidates for efficient coverage, and further engages stronger models on the hard ones, maintaining accuracy while reducing cost. This approach not only improves pre-ranking effectiveness but also provides a practical perspective on scaling strategies in industrial recommender systems. HAP has been deployed in the Toutiao production system for 9 months, yielding up to 0.4% improvement in user app usage duration and 0.05% in active days, without additional computational cost. We also release a large-scale industrial hybrid-sample dataset to enable the systematic study of source-driven candidate heterogeneity in pre-ranking.

The ongoing shift of AI models from centralized cloud APIs to local AI agents on edge devices is enabling \textit{Client-Side Autonomous Agents (CSAAs)} -- persistent personal agents that can plan, access local context, and invoke tools on behalf of users. As these agents begin to collaborate by delegating subtasks directly between clients, they naturally form \emph{Agentic Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Networks}. Unlike classic file-sharing overlays where the exchanged object is static, hash-indexed content (e.g., files in BitTorrent), agentic overlays exchange \emph{capabilities and actions} that are heterogeneous, state-dependent, and potentially unsafe if delegated to untrusted peers. This article outlines the networking foundations needed to make such collaboration practical. We propose a plane-based reference architecture that decouples connectivity/identity, semantic discovery, and execution. Besides, we introduce signed, soft-state capability descriptors to support intent- and constraint-aware discovery. To cope with adversarial settings, we further present a \textit{tiered verification} spectrum: Tier~1 relies on reputation signals, Tier~2 applies lightweight canary challenge-response with fallback selection, and Tier~3 requires evidence packages such as signed tool receipts/traces (and, when applicable, attestation). Using a discrete-event simulator that models registry-based discovery, Sybil-style index poisoning, and capability drift, we show that tiered verification substantially improves end-to-end workflow success while keeping discovery latency near-constant and control-plane overhead modest.

Portable active back support devices (BSDs) offer tunable assistance but are often bulky and heavy, limiting their usability. In contrast, passive BSDs are lightweight and compact but lack the ability to adapt their assistance to different back movements. We present a soft, lightweight, and compact BSD that combines a variable-stiffness passive element and an active element (an artificial muscle) in parallel. The device provides tunable assistance through discrete changes in stiffness values and active force levels. We validate the device's tuning capabilities through bench testing and on-body characterization. Further, we use the device's tuning capabilities to provide weight-adaptive object lifting and lowering assistance. We detect the weight handled by the user based on forearm force myography and upper-back inertial measurement unit data. Furthermore, electromyography analyses in five participants performing symmetric object lifting and lowering tasks showed reductions in back extensor activity. Preliminary results in one participant also indicated reduced muscle activity during asymmetric lifting.

Leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for code generation has increasingly emerged as a common practice in the domain of software engineering. Relevant benchmarks have been established to evaluate the code generation capabilities of LLMs. However, existing benchmarks focus primarily on sequential code, lacking the ability to effectively evaluate LLMs on concurrent code generation. Compared to sequential code, concurrent code exhibits greater complexity and possesses unique types of bugs, such as deadlocks and race conditions, that do not occur in sequential code. Therefore, a benchmark for evaluating sequential code generation cannot be useful for evaluating concurrent code generation with LLMs. To address this gap, we designed a benchmark CONCUR specifically aimed at evaluating the capability of LLMs to generate concurrent code. CONCUR consists of a base set of 43 concurrency problems derived from a standard concurrency textbook, together with 72 validated mutant variants, resulting in 115 total problems. The base problems serve as the semantic core of the benchmark, while the mutants expand linguistic and structural diversity. We conducted an evaluation of a range of LLMs on CONCUR, highlighting limitations of current models. Overall, our work provides a novel direction for evaluating the capability of LLMs to generate code with focus on concurrency.

Accurate polyp segmentation is essential for early colorectal cancer detection, yet achieving reliable boundary localization remains challenging due to low mucosal contrast, uneven illumination, and color similarity between polyps and surrounding tissue. Conventional methods relying solely on RGB information often struggle to delineate precise boundaries due to weak contrast and ambiguous structures between polyps and surrounding mucosa. To establish a quantitative foundation for this limitation, we analyzed polyp-background contrast in the wavelet domain, revealing that grayscale representations consistently preserve higher boundary contrast than RGB images across all frequency bands. This finding suggests that boundary cues are more distinctly represented in the grayscale domain than in the color domain. Motivated by this finding, we propose a segmentation model that integrates grayscale and RGB representations through complementary frequency-consistent interaction, enhancing boundary precision while preserving structural coherence. Extensive experiments on four benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves superior boundary precision and robustness compared to conventional models.

Educational games can foster critical thinking, problem-solving, and motivation, yet instructors often find it difficult to design games that reliably achieve specific learning outcomes. Existing authoring environments reduce the need for programming expertise, but they do not eliminate the underlying challenges of educational game design, and they can leave non-expert designers reliant on opaque suggestions from AI systems. We designed a controlled natural language framework-based web tool that positions language as the primary interface for LLM-assisted educational game design. In the tool, users and an LLM assistant collaboratively develop a structured language that maps pedagogy to gameplay through four linked components. We argue that, by making pedagogical intent explicit and editable in the interface, the tool has the potential to lower design barriers for non-expert designers, preserves human agency in critical decisions, and enables alignment and reflections between pedagogy and gameplay during and after co-creation.

While incorporating LLMs into systems offers significant benefits in critical application areas such as healthcare, new security challenges emerge due to the potential cyber kill chain cycles that combine adversarial model, prompt injection and conventional cyber attacks. Threat modeling methods enable the system designers to identify potential cyber threats and the relevant mitigations during the early stages of development. Although the cyber security community has extensive experience in applying these methods to software-based systems, the elicited threats are usually abstract and vague, limiting their effectiveness for conducting proper likelihood and impact assessments for risk prioritization, especially in complex systems with novel attacks surfaces, such as those involving LLMs. In this study, we propose a structured, goal driven risk assessment approach that contextualizes the threats with detailed attack vectors, preconditions, and attack paths through the use of attack trees. We demonstrate the proposed approach on a case study with an LLM agent-based healthcare system. This study harmonizes the state-of-the-art attacks to LLMs with conventional ones and presents possible attack paths applicable to similar systems. By providing a structured risk assessment, this study makes a significant contribution to the literature and advances the secure-by-design practices in LLM-based systems.