Abstract

Extracting work from a physical system is one of the cornerstones of quantum thermodynamics. The extractable work, as quantified by ergotropy, necessitates a complete description of the quantum system. This is significantly more challenging when the state of the underlying system is unknown, as quantum tomography is extremely inefficient. In this article, we analyze the number of samples of the unknown state required to extract work. With only a single copy of an unknown state, we prove that ergotropy approaches zero in the asymptotic limit, rendering work extraction nearly impossible. In contrast, when multiple copies are available, we quantify the sample complexity required to estimate extractable work, establishing a scaling relationship that balances the desired accuracy with success probability. Our work develops a sample-efficient protocol to assess the utility of unknown states as quantum batteries and opens avenues for estimating thermodynamic quantities using near-term quantum computers.

Abstract

Curating high-quality, domain-specific datasets is a major bottleneck for deploying robust vision systems, requiring complex trade-offs between data quality, diversity, and cost when researching vast, unlabeled data lakes. We introduce Labeling Copilot, the first data curation deep research agent for computer vision. A central orchestrator agent, powered by a large multimodal language model, uses multi-step reasoning to execute specialized tools across three core capabilities: (1) Calibrated Discovery sources relevant, in-distribution data from large repositories; (2) Controllable Synthesis generates novel data for rare scenarios with robust filtering; and (3) Consensus Annotation produces accurate labels by orchestrating multiple foundation models via a novel consensus mechanism incorporating non-maximum suppression and voting. Our large-scale validation proves the effectiveness of Labeling Copilot's components. The Consensus Annotation module excels at object discovery: on the dense COCO dataset, it averages 14.2 candidate proposals per image-nearly double the 7.4 ground-truth objects-achieving a final annotation mAP of 37.1%. On the web-scale Open Images dataset, it navigated extreme class imbalance to discover 903 new bounding box categories, expanding its capability to over 1500 total. Concurrently, our Calibrated Discovery tool, tested at a 10-million sample scale, features an active learning strategy that is up to 40x more computationally efficient than alternatives with equivalent sample efficiency. These experiments validate that an agentic workflow with optimized, scalable tools provides a robust foundation for curating industrial-scale datasets.

Abstract

Excessive groundwater extraction has led to a significant decline in water tables, highlighting the need for continuous monitoring. This study presents an Internet of Things (IoT)-based approach for real-time estimation of groundwater levels in borewells. In addition to water level measurements, parameters such as motor current and rainfall are tracked to evaluate their influence on groundwater dynamics. To assess practical feasibility, five monitoring nodes were deployed across a small educational campus in Hyderabad, India. Data collected over a two-month period indicate that the proposed low-cost system is both reliable and effective in real-world conditions, while also revealing interesting correlations between groundwater level variations and the monitored parameters.

Abstract

The industrial worker has been portrayed in environmental and technological discourses as unconcerned with environmental questions, a passive recipient of technology or as harbouring an illogical aversion to modern technology. Shankar Guha Niyogi: A Politics in Red and Green delves into the rich ideas and experiences of a movement born in Chhattisgarh in 1977 to argue for the possibility of a radically different engagement of labour with questions of ecology and technology. Founded by Shankar Guha Niyogi as a union for the miners of the Bhilai Steel Plant, the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (CMM) established itself as a uniquely diverse organisation, representing mineworkers, factory workers, and agricultural workers across Chhattisgarh. The CMM represented a visionary politics concerned not only with multiple livelihoods, but also the interrelationships between them. The author studies how this trade union grappled with wide-ranging ecological changes in the region, bringing about, in the process, a transformed understanding of the role of a ‘trade union’. Through this recovery of Niyogi and the CMM, the author addresses crucial questions: What are the ideological frameworks, structures and processes that encourage an involved conversation between labour and environment? Can the worker be part of the process of democratising technology, of blurring the boundaries between the ‘user’ environment and the ‘developer’ environment of technology? Can we engage with questions of nationality and sub-nationality, ethnicity and identity even as we imagine a definition of identity deeply rooted in labour? Finally, are these conversations around technology, environment, and nationality an aberration, a disavowal of class-based trade union practice? In addressing these questions, this book will be recommended reading for students and scholars of environment studies and labour studies.

Abstract

Pretrained models are ubiquitous in the current deep learning landscape, offering strong results on a broad range of tasks. Recent works have shown that models differing in various design choices exhibit categorically diverse generalization behavior, resulting in one model grasping distinct data-specific insights unavailable to the other. In this paper, we propose to leverage large publicly available model repositories as an auxiliary source of model improvements. We introduce a data partitioning strategy where pretrained models autonomously adopt either the role of a student, seeking knowledge, or that of a teacher, imparting knowledge. Experiments across various tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach. In image classification, we improved the performance of ViT-B by approximately 1.4% through bidirectional knowledge transfer with ViT-T. For semantic segmentation, our method boosted all evaluation metrics by enabling knowledge transfer both within and across backbone architectures. In video saliency prediction, our approach achieved a new state-of-the-art. We further extend our approach to knowledge transfer between multiple models, leading to considerable performance improvements for all model participants.

Abstract

Residential electricity consumption datasets are essential for applications such as smart grid management, home automation, renewable energy integration, infrastructure planning, and policy-making. However, obtaining high-resolution residential datasets remains challenging due to the high costs and complexities of sensor installation, monitoring, and maintenance, obtaining approvals and related human factors, among other issues. To address this issue with a focus on the Indian residential context, where such data is quite limited, we propose a Residential Electricity Usage Simulator (REUS), to generate synthetic residential electricity usage data. Our approach models electricity usage for 7 different categories of homes using data collected over one year at an hourly interval, from 65 residences. In addition to energy data, we also collected 18 different features for each home to improve our modeling. The data and features are preprocessed using feature selection with Probabilistic Finite State Machines (validated through Multiple Correspondence Analysis) and further refined through systematic data cleaning and imputation. We built simulation models using the popular Machine learning techniques such as Long Short-Term Memory networks, including Vanilla, Stacked, BiDirectional, and Encoder-Decoder LSTMs and Transformer model, including Vanilla Transformer and Temporal Fusion Transformer. In addition, statistical techniques such as Markov Chains of orders (0, 1, 2, 3) and ARIMA were used as benchmarks to evaluate the models’ ability to generate a synthetic residential electricity dataset that is close to real data. Via extensive experimentation and analysis, our results show that (Bi-di) LSTMs capture the trends in electricity consumption more effectively (with the lowest RMSE) than the other models. Simulation and analysis of this nature enables broader, regionspecific energy research, reducing the need for costly or intrusive data collection.

Abstract

This study explored the cognitive status of community-dwelling Indian older adults. Our objective was to observe the association of age-related cognitive change with other physiological health parameters like, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), and vitamin B12 in older adults in India. Urban community dwelling, consenting older adults (55–85years, n = 123), with no clinical history of cognitive or neurological problems participated in the study. The participants underwent a detailed demographic documentation and cognitive assessment comprising of tests from different cognitive domains and blood-based assessment of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and vitamin B12. As expected, performance in all cognitive domains declined with increasing age. HbA1c levels correlated inversely with processing speed and executive function. Vitamin B12 levels did not correlate with performance on any cognitive test. Interestingly, geriatric depression correlated inversely with visuospatial abilities. A stepwise multiple regression revealed that HbA1c and geriatric depression contributed to 28 % variance on Montreal Cognitive Assessment while age did not qualify as a significant contributor. Using Petersen’s criteria, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) was observed in 17 % of participants. Participants classified as MCI had higher levels of HbA1c and geriatric depression, and lower performance in all cognitive domains compared to non-MCI participants. In conclusion, although cognitive performance declined with age, HbA1c and geriatric depression had a greater role in cognitive decline than age. With a high incidence of diabetes in India, this study highlights the prevalence of metabolism-linked changes in cognition, which are often ignored in community dwelling older adults in India.

Abstract

Accurate molecular subtyping of cancer is crucial for advancing personalized medicine. Although multiomics data contain valuable predictive information, effectively integrating them is challenging domics sources, providing a robust framework for molecular characterizations-modal biological interactions. We propose HyperCLSA (Hypergraph Contrastive Learning with Self-Attention), a novel deep learning framework for efficient multi-omics integration in breast cancer subtyping. HyperCLSA combines hypergraph-based sample encoding, supervised contrastive learning for latent space alignment, and multi-head self-attention for adaptive fusion of omics modalities. Evaluated on The Cancer Genome Atlas Breast Cancer dataset (TCGA-BRCA) forPAM50 subtype classification, HyperCLSA achieves a state-of-the-art accuracy of 90.1%, significantly outperforming established baselines. Our results demonstrate HyperCLSA’s effectiveness in extracting complementary information across heterogeneous omics sources, providing a robust framework for molecular characterization of breast cancer.

Abstract

Amid the surge of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in blockchain, this study introduces a meticulous methodology focusing on transaction behaviors to unveil rug pulls — a critical issue impacting financial security and trust in the NFT landscape. Using a Graph Isomorphism Network (GIN) model with 6 behavioral patterns obtained from transaction sequences, we create a “Rug Pull Pattern Matcher” model. We provide a comprehensive analysis by applying the model on two datasets — creator’s transactions from 50 reputable NFT projects and 32 reported rug pulls. Our work utilizes automated labeling to categorize addresses and our analysis reveals several interconnected NFT creator activities. We present an in-depth mapping of fund flows and creator interactions exposing suspicious behaviors like artificial inflation and intricate network collaborations among creators. The results of our proposed model demonstrate the efficacy of our methodology with 75.4% accuracy and 85.9% precision on the dataset of reported rug pulls. This work provides comparative analyses of genuine and malicious creator networks to elucidate their structural differences, helping to identify genuine and potentially fraudulent NFT activities.

Abstract

Recent advances in text-to-image models have enabled a new era of creative and controllable image generation. However, generating compositional scenes with multiple subjects and attributes remains a significant challenge. To enhance user control over subject placement, several layout-guided methods have been proposed. However, these methods face numerous challenges, particularly in compositional scenes. Unintended subjects often appear outside the layouts, generated images can be out-of-distribution and contain unnatural artifacts, or attributes bleed across subjects, leading to incorrect visual outputs. In this work, we propose MALeR, a method that addresses each of these challenges. Given a text prompt and corresponding layouts, our method prevents subjects from appearing outside the given layouts while being in-distribution. Additionally, we propose a masked, attribute-aware binding mechanism that prevents attribute leakage, enabling accurate rendering of subjects with multiple attributes, even in complex compositional scenes. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation demonstrates that our method achieves superior performance in compositional accuracy, generation consistency, and attribute binding compared to previous work. MALeR is particularly adept at generating images of scenes with multiple subjects and multiple attributes per subject.