The number of international benchmarking competitions is steadily increasing in various fields of machine learning (ML) research and practice. So far, however, little is known about the common practice as well as bottlenecks faced by the community in tackling the research questions posed. To shed light on the status quo of algorithm development in the specific field of biomedical imaging analysis, we designed an international survey that was issued to all participants of challenges conducted in conjunction with the IEEE ISBI 2021 and MICCAI 2021 conferences (80 competitions in total). The survey covered participants' expertise and working environments, their chosen strategies, as well as algorithm characteristics. A median of 72% challenge participants took part in the survey. According to our results, knowledge exchange was the primary incentive (70%) for participation, while the reception of prize money played only a minor role (16%). While a median of 80 working hours was spent on method development, a large portion of participants stated that they did not have enough time for method development (32%). 25% perceived the infrastructure to be a bottleneck. Overall, 94% of all solutions were deep learning-based. Of these, 84% were based on standard architectures. 43% of the respondents reported that the data samples (e.g., images) were too large to be processed at once. This was most commonly addressed by patch-based training (69%), downsampling (37%), and solving 3D analysis tasks as a series of 2D tasks. K-fold cross-validation on the training set was performed by only 37% of the participants and only 50% of the participants performed ensembling based on multiple identical models (61%) or heterogeneous models (39%). 48% of the respondents applied postprocessing steps.

Image super-resolution is a common task on mobile and IoT devices, where one often needs to upscale and enhance low-resolution images and video frames. While numerous solutions have been proposed for this problem in the past, they are usually not compatible with low-power mobile NPUs having many computational and memory constraints. In this Mobile AI challenge, we address this problem and propose the participants to design an efficient quantized image super-resolution solution that can demonstrate a real-time performance on mobile NPUs. The participants were provided with the DIV2K dataset and trained INT8 models to do a high-quality 3X image upscaling. The runtime of all models was evaluated on the Synaptics VS680 Smart Home board with a dedicated edge NPU capable of accelerating quantized neural networks. All proposed solutions are fully compatible with the above NPU, demonstrating an up to 60 FPS rate when reconstructing Full HD resolution images. A detailed description of all models developed in the challenge is provided in this paper.

Federated learning (FL) enables the building of robust and generalizable AI models by leveraging diverse datasets from multiple collaborators without centralizing the data. We created NVIDIA FLARE as an open-source software development kit (SDK) to make it easier for data scientists to use FL in their research and real-world applications. The SDK includes solutions for state-of-the-art FL algorithms and federated machine learning approaches, which facilitate building workflows for distributed learning across enterprises and enable platform developers to create a secure, privacy-preserving offering for multiparty collaboration utilizing homomorphic encryption or differential privacy. The SDK is a lightweight, flexible, and scalable Python package, and allows researchers to bring their data science workflows implemented in any training libraries (PyTorch, TensorFlow, XGBoost, or even NumPy) and apply them in real-world FL settings. This paper introduces the key design principles of FLARE and illustrates some use cases (e.g., COVID analysis) with customizable FL workflows that implement different privacy-preserving algorithms. Code is available at https://github.com/NVIDIA/NVFlare.

我们研究了具有一般函数近似的部分可观察的MDP（POMDP）的外部评估（OPE）。现有的方法，例如顺序重要性采样估计器和拟合-Q评估，受POMDP中的地平线的诅咒。为了解决这个问题，我们通过引入将未来代理作为输入的未来依赖性值函数来开发一种新颖的无模型OPE方法。未来依赖性的价值函数在完全可观察的MDP中起着与经典价值函数相似的角色。我们为未来依赖性价值作为条件矩方程提供了一个新的Bellman方程，将历史记录代理用作仪器变量。我们进一步提出了一种最小值学习方法，以使用新的Bellman方程来学习未来依赖的价值函数。我们获得PAC结果，这意味着我们的OPE估计器是一致的，只要期货和历史包含有关潜在状态和Bellman完整性的足够信息。最后，我们将方法扩展到学习动力学，并在POMDP中建立我们的方法与众所周知的光谱学习方法之间的联系。

语言模型既展示了定量的改进，又展示了新的定性功能，随着规模的增加。尽管它们具有潜在的变革性影响，但这些新能力的特征却很差。为了为未来的研究提供信息，为破坏性的新模型能力做准备，并改善社会有害的效果，至关重要的是，我们必须了解目前和近乎未来的能力和语言模型的局限性。为了应对这一挑战，我们介绍了超越模仿游戏基准（Big Bench）。 Big Bench目前由204个任务组成，由132家机构的442位作者贡献。任务主题是多样的，从语言学，儿童发展，数学，常识性推理，生物学，物理学，社会偏见，软件开发等等。 Big-Bench专注于被认为超出当前语言模型的功能的任务。我们评估了OpenAI的GPT型号，Google内部密集变压器体系结构和大型基础上的开关稀疏变压器的行为，跨越了数百万到数十亿个参数。此外，一个人类专家评估者团队执行了所有任务，以提供强大的基准。研究结果包括：模型性能和校准都随规模改善，但绝对的术语（以及与评估者的性能相比）；在模型类中的性能非常相似，尽管带有稀疏性。逐渐和预测的任务通常涉及大量知识或记忆成分，而在临界规模上表现出“突破性”行为的任务通常涉及多个步骤或组成部分或脆性指标；社交偏见通常会随着含糊不清的环境而随着规模而增加，但这可以通过提示来改善。

随着商业深度传感器和3D扫描仪的最近可用性和可承受能力，越来越多的3D（即RGBD，点云）数据集已被宣传以促进3D计算机视觉的研究。但是，现有的数据集覆盖相对较小的区域或具有有限的语义注释。对城市规模3D场景的细粒度理解仍处于起步阶段。在本文中，我们介绍了Sensaturban，一个城市规模的UAV摄影测量点云数据集，包括从三个英国城市收集的近30亿积分，占地7.6公里^ 2。 DataSet中的每个点已标记为具有细粒度的语义注释，导致数据集是上一个现有最大摄影测量点云数据集的三倍的三倍。除了诸如道路和植被等诸如道路和植被的常见类别之外，我们的数据集还包含包括轨道，桥梁和河流的城市水平类别。基于此数据集，我们进一步构建了基准，以评估最先进的分段算法的性能。特别是，我们提供了全面的分析，确定了限制城市规模点云理解的几个关键挑战。数据集可在http://point-cloud-analysis.cs.ox.ac.uk中获取。

迭代学习控制（ILC）是在存在建模误差中的高性能跟踪的强大技术，以获得最佳控制应用。在化学反应器，工业机器人和Quadpopters等应用中，有广泛的现有工作表明其经验效果。然而，即使在存在大型建模错误的情况下，也有很少的现有理论工作，即使在大型建模错误的情况下，也可以在存在大型建模错误中，其中使用错过模型（mm）的最佳控制方法经常表现不佳。我们的工作提出了ilc和mm对线性二次调节器（LQR）问题的表现的理论研究，具有未知的过渡动态。我们表明，对于ILC的最佳LQR控制器测量的次优差间隙低于MM的高阶术语在高建模误差的方案中变得显着的比例低于MM。我们分析的一个关键部分是有限地域设置中离散Ricatti方程的扰动界限，其中解决方案不是一个固定点，并且需要使用递归界限跟踪错误。我们将我们的理论调查结果与具有近似模型的玩具线性动力系统的实验实验，一个非线性倒立摆动系统，具有错过质量的非线性倒立摆动系统，以及风的非线性平面正质量。实验表明，根据计算轨迹的成本，ILC在模拟误差高时显着优于MM显着。

虽然我们注意临床自然语言处理（NLP）的最新进展，但我们可以注意到临床和翻译研究界的一些抵抗，因为透明度，可解释性和可用性有限，采用NLP模型。在这项研究中，我们提出了一种开放的自然语言处理开发框架。我们通过实施NLP算法为国家Covid队列协作（N3C）进行了评估。基于Covid-19相关临床笔记的信息提取的利益，我们的工作包括1）使用Covid-19标志和症状作为用例的开放数据注释过程，2）一个社区驱动的规则集合平台，3）合成文本数据生成工作流程，用于生成信息提取任务的文本而不涉及人为受试者。 Corpora来自来自三个不同机构的文本（Mayo Clinic，肯塔基州大学，明尼苏达大学）。用单个机构（Mayo）规则集进行了金标准注释。这导致了0.876,0.706和0.694的F-Scors分别用于Mayo，Minnesota和肯塔基测试数据集。作为N3C NLP子群体的联盟努力的研究表明，创建联邦NLP算法开发和基准测试平台的可行性，以增强多机构临床NLP研究和采用。虽然我们在这项工作中使用Covid-19作为用例，但我们的框架足以适用于临床NLP的其他兴趣领域。

回溯搜索算法通常用于解决约束满足问题（CSP）。回溯搜索的效率在很大程度上取决于可变排序启发式。目前，最常用的启发式是根据专家知识进行手工制作的。在本文中，我们提出了一种基于深度的加强学习方法，可以自动发现新的变量订购启发式，更好地适用于给定类CSP实例。我们显示，直接优化搜索成本很难用于自动启动，并建议优化在搜索树中到达叶节点的预期成本。为了捕获变量和约束之间的复杂关系，我们设计基于图形神经网络的表示方案，可以处理具有不同大小和约束的CSP实例。随机CSP实例上的实验结果表明，学习的政策在最小化搜索树大小的方面优于古典手工制作的启发式，并且可以有效地推广到比训练中使用的实例。

The recent increase in public and academic interest in preserving biodiversity has led to the growth of the field of conservation technology. This field involves designing and constructing tools that utilize technology to aid in the conservation of wildlife. In this article, we will use case studies to demonstrate the importance of designing conservation tools with human-wildlife interaction in mind and provide a framework for creating successful tools. These case studies include a range of complexities, from simple cat collars to machine learning and game theory methodologies. Our goal is to introduce and inform current and future researchers in the field of conservation technology and provide references for educating the next generation of conservation technologists. Conservation technology not only has the potential to benefit biodiversity but also has broader impacts on fields such as sustainability and environmental protection. By using innovative technologies to address conservation challenges, we can find more effective and efficient solutions to protect and preserve our planet's resources.