STARS: A Unified Framework for Singing Transcription, Alignment, and Refined Style Annotation

Recent breakthroughs in singing voice synthesis (SVS) have heightened the demand for high-quality annotated datasets, yet manual annotation remains prohibitively labor-intensive and resource-intensive. Existing automatic singing annotation (ASA) methods, however, primarily tackle isolated aspects of the annotation pipeline. To address this fundamental challenge, we present STARS, which is, to our knowledge, the first unified framework that simultaneously addresses singing transcription, alignment, and refined style annotation. Our framework delivers comprehensive multi-level annotations encompassing: (1) precise phoneme-audio alignment, (2) robust note transcription and temporal localization, (3) expressive vocal technique identification, and (4) global stylistic characterization including emotion and pace. The proposed architecture employs hierarchical acoustic feature processing across frame, word, phoneme, note, and sentence levels. The novel non-autoregressive local acoustic encoders enable structured hierarchical representation learning. Experimental validation confirms the framework's superior performance across multiple evaluation dimensions compared to existing annotation approaches. Furthermore, applications in SVS training demonstrate that models utilizing STARS-annotated data achieve significantly enhanced perceptual naturalness and precise style control. This work not only overcomes critical scalability challenges in the creation of singing datasets but also pioneers new methodologies for controllable singing voice synthesis. Audio samples are available at https://gwx314.github.io/stars-demo/.

PAST: A multimodal single-cell foundation model for histopathology and spatial transcriptomics in cancer

While pathology foundation models have transformed cancer image analysis, they often lack integration with molecular data at single-cell resolution, limiting their utility for precision oncology. Here, we present PAST, a pan-cancer single-cell foundation model trained on 20 million paired histopathology images and single-cell transcriptomes spanning multiple tumor types and tissue contexts. By jointly encoding cellular morphology and gene expression, PAST learns unified cross-modal representations that capture both spatial and molecular heterogeneity at the cellular level. This approach enables accurate prediction of single-cell gene expression, virtual molecular staining, and multimodal survival analysis directly from routine pathology slides. Across diverse cancers and downstream tasks, PAST consistently exceeds the performance of existing approaches, demonstrating robust generalizability and scalability. Our work establishes a new paradigm for pathology foundation models, providing a versatile tool for high-resolution spatial omics, mechanistic discovery, and precision cancer research.

Surrogate Modeling via Factorization Machine and Ising Model with Enhanced Higher-Order Interaction Learning

Recently, a surrogate model was proposed that employs a factorization machine to approximate the underlying input-output mapping of the original system, with quantum annealing used to optimize the resulting surrogate function. Inspired by this approach, we propose an enhanced surrogate model that incorporates additional slack variables into both the factorization machine and its associated Ising representation thereby unifying what was by design a two-step process into a single, integrated step. During the training phase, the slack variables are iteratively updated, enabling the model to account for higher-order feature interactions. We apply the proposed method to the task of predicting drug combination effects. Experimental results indicate that the introduction of slack variables leads to a notable improvement of performance. Our algorithm offers a promising approach for building efficient surrogate models that exploit potential quantum advantages.

An RRT* algorithm based on Riemannian metric model for optimal path planning

This paper presents a Riemannian metric-based model to solve the optimal path planning problem on two-dimensional smooth submanifolds in high-dimensional space. Our model is based on constructing a new Riemannian metric on a two-dimensional projection plane, which is induced by the high-dimensional Euclidean metric on two-dimensional smooth submanifold and reflects the environmental information of the robot. The optimal path planning problem in high-dimensional space is therefore transformed into a geometric problem on the two-dimensional plane with new Riemannian metric. Based on the new Riemannian metric, we proposed an incremental algorithm RRT*-R on the projection plane. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is suitable for scenarios with uneven fields in multiple dimensions. The proposed algorithm can help the robot to effectively avoid areas with drastic changes in height, ground resistance and other environmental factors. More importantly, the RRT*-R algorithm shows better smoothness and optimization properties compared with the original RRT* algorithm using Euclidean distance in high-dimensional workspace. The length of the entire path by RRT*-R is a good approximation of the theoretical minimum geodesic distance on projection plane.

Multimodal LLMs for Visualization Reconstruction and Understanding

Visualizations are crucial for data communication, yet understanding them requires comprehension of both visual elements and their underlying data relationships. Current multimodal large models, while effective in natural image understanding, struggle with visualization due to their inability to decode the data-to-visual mapping rules and extract structured information. To address these challenges, we present a novel dataset and train multimodal visualization LLMs specifically designed for understanding. Our approach combines chart images with their corresponding vectorized representations, encoding schemes, and data features. The proposed vector format enables compact and accurate reconstruction of visualization content. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in both data extraction accuracy and chart reconstruction quality.

Assigning Multi-Robot Tasks to Multitasking Robots

One simplifying assumption in existing and well-performing task allocation methods is that the robots are single-tasking: each robot operates on a single task at any given time. While this assumption is harmless to make in some situations, it can be inefficient or even infeasible in others. In this paper, we consider assigning multi-robot tasks to multitasking robots. The key contribution is a novel task allocation framework that incorporates the consideration of physical constraints introduced by multitasking. This is in contrast to the existing work where such constraints are largely ignored. After formulating the problem, we propose a compilation to weighted MAX-SAT, which allows us to leverage existing solvers for a solution. A more efficient greedy heuristic is then introduced. For evaluation, we first compare our methods with a modern baseline that is efficient for single-tasking robots to validate the benefits of multitasking in synthetic domains. Then, using a site-clearing scenario in simulation, we further illustrate the complex task interaction considered by the multitasking robots in our approach to demonstrate its performance. Finally, we demonstrate a physical experiment to show how multitasking enabled by our approach can benefit task efficiency in a realistic setting.

RL from Physical Feedback: Aligning Large Motion Models with Humanoid Control

This paper focuses on a critical challenge in robotics: translating text-driven human motions into executable actions for humanoid robots, enabling efficient and cost-effective learning of new behaviors. While existing text-to-motion generation methods achieve semantic alignment between language and motion, they often produce kinematically or physically infeasible motions unsuitable for real-world deployment. To bridge this sim-to-real gap, we propose Reinforcement Learning from Physical Feedback (RLPF), a novel framework that integrates physics-aware motion evaluation with text-conditioned motion generation. RLPF employs a motion tracking policy to assess feasibility in a physics simulator, generating rewards for fine-tuning the motion generator. Furthermore, RLPF introduces an alignment verification module to preserve semantic fidelity to text instructions. This joint optimization ensures both physical plausibility and instruction alignment. Extensive experiments show that RLPF greatly outperforms baseline methods in generating physically feasible motions while maintaining semantic correspondence with text instruction, enabling successful deployment on real humanoid robots.

From Experts to a Generalist: Toward General Whole-Body Control for Humanoid Robots

Achieving general agile whole-body control on humanoid robots remains a major challenge due to diverse motion demands and data conflicts. While existing frameworks excel in training single motion-specific policies, they struggle to generalize across highly varied behaviors due to conflicting control requirements and mismatched data distributions. In this work, we propose BumbleBee (BB), an expert-generalist learning framework that combines motion clustering and sim-to-real adaptation to overcome these challenges. BB first leverages an autoencoder-based clustering method to group behaviorally similar motions using motion features and motion descriptions. Expert policies are then trained within each cluster and refined with real-world data through iterative delta action modeling to bridge the sim-to-real gap. Finally, these experts are distilled into a unified generalist controller that preserves agility and robustness across all motion types. Experiments on two simulations and a real humanoid robot demonstrate that BB achieves state-of-the-art general whole-body control, setting a new benchmark for agile, robust, and generalizable humanoid performance in the real world.

A Study on Individual Spatiotemporal Activity Generation Method Using MCP-Enhanced Chain-of-Thought Large Language Models

Human spatiotemporal behavior simulation is critical for urban planning research, yet traditional rule-based and statistical approaches suffer from high computational costs, limited generalizability, and poor scalability. While large language models (LLMs) show promise as "world simulators," they face challenges in spatiotemporal reasoning including limited spatial cognition, lack of physical constraint understanding, and group homogenization tendencies. This paper introduces a framework integrating chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning with Model Context Protocol (MCP) to enhance LLMs' capability in simulating spatiotemporal behaviors that correspond with validation data patterns. The methodology combines human-like progressive reasoning through a five-stage cognitive framework with comprehensive data processing via six specialized MCP tool categories: temporal management, spatial navigation, environmental perception, personal memory, social collaboration, and experience evaluation. Experiments in Shanghai's Lujiazui district validate the framework's effectiveness across 1,000 generated samples. Results demonstrate high similarity with real mobile signaling data, achieving generation quality scores of 7.86 to 8.36 across different base models. Parallel processing experiments show efficiency improvements, with generation times decreasing from 1.30 to 0.17 minutes per sample when scaling from 2 to 12 processes. This work contributes to integrating CoT reasoning with MCP for urban behavior modeling, advancing LLMs applications in urban computing and providing a practical approach for synthetic mobility data generation. The framework offers a foundation for smart city planning, transportation forecasting, and participatory urban design applications.

HyColor: An Efficient Heuristic Algorithm for Graph Coloring

The graph coloring problem (GCP) is a classic combinatorial optimization problem that aims to find the minimum number of colors assigned to vertices of a graph such that no two adjacent vertices receive the same color. GCP has been extensively studied by researchers from various fields, including mathematics, computer science, and biological science. Due to the NP-hard nature, many heuristic algorithms have been proposed to solve GCP. However, existing GCP algorithms focus on either small hard graphs or large-scale sparse graphs (with up to 10^7 vertices). This paper presents an efficient hybrid heuristic algorithm for GCP, named HyColor, which excels in handling large-scale sparse graphs while achieving impressive results on small dense graphs. The efficiency of HyColor comes from the following three aspects: a local decision strategy to improve the lower bound on the chromatic number; a graph-reduction strategy to reduce the working graph; and a k-core and mixed degree-based greedy heuristic for efficiently coloring graphs. HyColor is evaluated against three state-of-the-art GCP algorithms across four benchmarks, comprising three large-scale sparse graph benchmarks and one small dense graph benchmark, totaling 209 instances. The results demonstrate that HyColor consistently outperforms existing heuristic algorithms in both solution accuracy and computational efficiency for the majority of instances. Notably, HyColor achieved the best solutions in 194 instances (over 93%), with 34 of these solutions significantly surpassing those of other algorithms. Furthermore, HyColor successfully determined the chromatic number and achieved optimal coloring in 128 instances.