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.

Deep neural networks are used for a wide range of regression problems. However, there exists a significant gap in accuracy between specialized approaches and generic direct regression in which a network is trained by minimizing the squared or absolute error of output labels. Prior work has shown that solving a regression problem with a set of binary classifiers can improve accuracy by utilizing well-studied binary classification algorithms. We introduce binary-encoded labels (BEL), which generalizes the application of binary classification to regression by providing a framework for considering arbitrary multi-bit values when encoding target values. We identify desirable properties of suitable encoding and decoding functions used for the conversion between real-valued and binary-encoded labels based on theoretical and empirical study. These properties highlight a tradeoff between classification error probability and error-correction capabilities of label encodings. BEL can be combined with off-the-shelf task-specific feature extractors and trained end-to-end. We propose a series of sample encoding, decoding, and training loss functions for BEL and demonstrate they result in lower error than direct regression and specialized approaches while being suitable for a diverse set of regression problems, network architectures, and evaluation metrics. BEL achieves state-of-the-art accuracies for several regression benchmarks. Code is available at https://github.com/ubc-aamodt-group/BEL_regression.

High-dimensional linear regression model is the most popular statistical model for high-dimensional data, but it is quite a challenging task to achieve a sparse set of regression coefficients. In this paper, we propose a simple heuristic algorithm to construct sparse high-dimensional linear regression models, which is adapted from the shortest solution-guided decimation algorithm and is referred to as ASSD. This algorithm constructs the support of regression coefficients under the guidance of the least-squares solution of the recursively decimated linear equations, and it applies an early-stopping criterion and a second-stage thresholding procedure to refine this support. Our extensive numerical results demonstrate that ASSD outperforms LASSO, vector approximate message passing, and two other representative greedy algorithms in solution accuracy and robustness. ASSD is especially suitable for linear regression problems with highly correlated measurement matrices encountered in real-world applications.

This study investigates clustered federated learning (FL), one of the formulations of FL with non-i.i.d. data, where the devices are partitioned into clusters and each cluster optimally fits its data with a localized model. We propose a novel clustered FL framework, which applies a nonconvex penalty to pairwise differences of parameters. This framework can automatically identify clusters without a priori knowledge of the number of clusters and the set of devices in each cluster. To implement the proposed framework, we develop a novel clustered FL method called FPFC. Advancing from the standard ADMM, our method is implemented in parallel, updates only a subset of devices at each communication round, and allows each participating device to perform a variable amount of work. This greatly reduces the communication cost while simultaneously preserving privacy, making it practical for FL. We also propose a new warmup strategy for hyperparameter tuning under FL settings and consider the asynchronous variant of FPFC (asyncFPFC). Theoretically, we provide convergence guarantees of FPFC for general nonconvex losses and establish the statistical convergence rate under a linear model with squared loss. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the advantages of FPFC over existing methods.

End-to-end formulation of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speech translation (ST) makes it easy to use a single model for both multilingual ASR and many-to-many ST. In this paper, we propose streaming language-agnostic multilingual speech recognition and translation using neural transducers (LAMASSU). To enable multilingual text generation in LAMASSU, we conduct a systematic comparison between specified and unified prediction and joint networks. We leverage a language-agnostic multilingual encoder that substantially outperforms shared encoders. To enhance LAMASSU, we propose to feed target LID to encoders. We also apply connectionist temporal classification regularization to transducer training. Experimental results show that LAMASSU not only drastically reduces the model size but also outperforms monolingual ASR and bilingual ST models.

标记级别的高清地图（HD地图）对自动驾驶汽车具有重要意义，尤其是在大规模，外观改变的情况下，自动驾驶汽车依靠标记来定位和车道来安全驾驶。在本文中，我们提出了一个高度可行的框架，用于使用简单的传感器设置（一个或多个单眼摄像机）自动构建标记级别的高清图。我们优化标记角的位置，以适合标记分割的结果，并同时优化相应摄像机的反视角映射（IPM）矩阵，以获得从前视图图像到鸟类视图（BEV）的准确转换。在定量评估中，构建的高清图几乎达到了百厘厘米级的准确性。优化的IPM矩阵的准确性与手动校准相似。该方法还可以概括以通过增加可识别标记的类型来从更广泛的意义上构建高清图。

复杂的系统在现实世界中无处不在，并且往往具有复杂且理解不足的动态。对于他们的控制问题，挑战是保证在这种肿的和陷入困境的环境中的准确性，鲁棒性和概括。幸运的是，复杂的系统可以分为人类认知似乎可以利用的多个模块化结构。受到一种新型控制方法的启发，提出了一种新颖的控制方法，是一种因果关系机制（CCMS），它提出了探索组合分裂和竞争的合作。我们的方法采用了层次强化学习理论（HRL），其中1）具有竞争意识的高级政策将整个复杂系统划分为多种功能机制，以及2）低级政策完成了每种机制的控制任务。特别是用于合作的级联控制模块有助于CCM的串联操作，并使用向前耦合的推理模块来恢复分区过程中丢失的耦合信息。在合成系统和现实世界的生物调节系统上，CCM方法即使有不可预测的随机噪声，CCM方法也可以达到稳健和最新的控制结果。此外，概括结果表明，重复使用准备的专业CCM有助于在具有不同混杂因素和动态的环境中表现良好。

由于其在多语言翻译，自动驾驶等方面的广泛应用，因此场景文本识别引起了近年来的兴趣。在本报告中，我们描述了我们对词汇表场上的解决方案的解决方案，该解决方案是词汇表场上的文本理解（OOV-ST）挑战，旨在从自然场景图像中提取胶卷外（OOV）单词。我们基于OCLIP的模型在H-Mean中获得28.59 \％，在ECCV2022 TIE Workshop中对OOV挑战的端到端OOV单词识别曲目排名第一。

近年来，破坏预测取得了迅速的进展，尤其是在机器学习（ML）的方法中。理解为什么预测因子使某个预测与未来Tokamak破坏预测指标的预测准确性一样至关重要。大多数破坏预测因素的目的是准确性或跨机能力。但是，如果可以解释中断预测模型，则可以说明为什么某些样品被归类为中断前体。这使我们能够说出传入的破坏类型，并使我们深入了解破坏机制。本文根据J-TEXT上的物理引导特征提取（IDP-PGFE）设计了一种称为可解释的破坏预测变量的破坏预测变量。通过提取物理引导的特征有效地改善了模型的预测性能。需要高性能模型来确保解释结果的有效性。 IDP-PGFE的可解释性研究提供了对J-Text破坏的理解，并且通常与现有的破坏理解一致。 IDP-PGFE已被应用于破坏，因为在J文本上的密度极限实验的密度不断增加。 PGFE的时间演变具有贡献，表明ECRH的应用触发了辐射引起的破坏，从而降低了破坏时的密度。虽然RMP的应用确实提高了J文本中的密度极限。解释性研究指导了RMP不仅会影响MHD不稳定性，而且还会影响辐射轮廓的密度极限破坏的物理机制，从而延迟了密度极限的破坏。

近年来，行业和学术界的深度学习（DL）迅速发展。但是，找到DL模型的最佳超参数通常需要高计算成本和人类专业知识。为了减轻上述问题，进化计算（EC）作为一种强大的启发式搜索方法显示出在DL模型的自动设计中，所谓的进化深度学习（EDL）具有重要优势。本文旨在从自动化机器学习（AUTOML）的角度分析EDL。具体来说，我们首先从机器学习和EC阐明EDL，并将EDL视为优化问题。根据DL管道的说法，我们系统地介绍了EDL方法，从功能工程，模型生成到具有新的分类法的模型部署（即，什么以及如何发展/优化），专注于解决方案表示和搜索范式的讨论通过EC处理优化问题。最后，提出了关键的应用程序，开放问题以及可能有希望的未来研究线。这项调查回顾了EDL的最新发展，并为EDL的开发提供了有见地的指南。