ATOM: A Framework of Detecting Query-Based Model Extraction Attacks for Graph Neural Networks

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have gained traction in Graph-based Machine Learning as a Service (GMLaaS) platforms, yet they remain vulnerable to graph-based model extraction attacks (MEAs), where adversaries reconstruct surrogate models by querying the victim model. Existing defense mechanisms, such as watermarking and fingerprinting, suffer from poor real-time performance, susceptibility to evasion, or reliance on post-attack verification, making them inadequate for handling the dynamic characteristics of graph-based MEA variants. To address these limitations, we propose ATOM, a novel real-time MEA detection framework tailored for GNNs. ATOM integrates sequential modeling and reinforcement learning to dynamically detect evolving attack patterns, while leveraging $k$-core embedding to capture the structural properties, enhancing detection precision. Furthermore, we provide theoretical analysis to characterize query behaviors and optimize detection strategies. Extensive experiments on multiple real-world datasets demonstrate that ATOM outperforms existing approaches in detection performance, maintaining stable across different time steps, thereby offering a more effective defense mechanism for GMLaaS environments.

ExPath: Towards Explaining Targeted Pathways for Biological Knowledge Bases

Biological knowledge bases provide systemically functional pathways of cells or organisms in terms of molecular interaction. However, recognizing more targeted pathways, particularly when incorporating wet-lab experimental data, remains challenging and typically requires downstream biological analyses and expertise. In this paper, we frame this challenge as a solvable graph learning and explaining task and propose a novel pathway inference framework, ExPath, that explicitly integrates experimental data, specifically amino acid sequences (AA-seqs), to classify various graphs (bio-networks) in biological databases. The links (representing pathways) that contribute more to classification can be considered as targeted pathways. Technically, ExPath comprises three components: (1) a large protein language model (pLM) that encodes and embeds AA-seqs into graph, overcoming traditional obstacles in processing AA-seq data, such as BLAST; (2) PathMamba, a hybrid architecture combining graph neural networks (GNNs) with state-space sequence modeling (Mamba) to capture both local interactions and global pathway-level dependencies; and (3) PathExplainer, a subgraph learning module that identifies functionally critical nodes and edges through trainable pathway masks. We also propose ML-oriented biological evaluations and a new metric. The experiments involving 301 bio-networks evaluations demonstrate that pathways inferred by ExPath maintain biological meaningfulness. We will publicly release curated 301 bio-network data soon.

A Survey of Model Extraction Attacks and Defenses in Distributed Computing Environments

Model Extraction Attacks (MEAs) threaten modern machine learning systems by enabling adversaries to steal models, exposing intellectual property and training data. With the increasing deployment of machine learning models in distributed computing environments, including cloud, edge, and federated learning settings, each paradigm introduces distinct vulnerabilities and challenges. Without a unified perspective on MEAs across these distributed environments, organizations risk fragmented defenses, inadequate risk assessments, and substantial economic and privacy losses. This survey is motivated by the urgent need to understand how the unique characteristics of cloud, edge, and federated deployments shape attack vectors and defense requirements. We systematically examine the evolution of attack methodologies and defense mechanisms across these environments, demonstrating how environmental factors influence security strategies in critical sectors such as autonomous vehicles, healthcare, and financial services. By synthesizing recent advances in MEAs research and discussing the limitations of current evaluation practices, this survey provides essential insights for developing robust and adaptive defense strategies. Our comprehensive approach highlights the importance of integrating protective measures across the entire distributed computing landscape to ensure the secure deployment of machine learning models.

Harnessing Large Language Models for Disaster Management: A Survey

Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized scientific research with their exceptional capabilities and transformed various fields. Among their practical applications, LLMs have been playing a crucial role in mitigating threats to human life, infrastructure, and the environment. Despite growing research in disaster LLMs, there remains a lack of systematic review and in-depth analysis of LLMs for natural disaster management. To address the gap, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of existing LLMs in natural disaster management, along with a taxonomy that categorizes existing works based on disaster phases and application scenarios. By collecting public datasets and identifying key challenges and opportunities, this study aims to guide the professional community in developing advanced LLMs for disaster management to enhance the resilience against natural disasters.

KG-CF: Knowledge Graph Completion with Context Filtering under the Guidance of Large Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown impressive performance in various tasks, including knowledge graph completion (KGC). However, current studies mostly apply LLMs to classification tasks, like identifying missing triplets, rather than ranking-based tasks, where the model ranks candidate entities based on plausibility. This focus limits the practical use of LLMs in KGC, as real-world applications prioritize highly plausible triplets. Additionally, while graph paths can help infer the existence of missing triplets and improve completion accuracy, they often contain redundant information. To address these issues, we propose KG-CF, a framework tailored for ranking-based KGC tasks. KG-CF leverages LLMs' reasoning abilities to filter out irrelevant contexts, achieving superior results on real-world datasets. The code and datasets are available at \url{https://anonymous.4open.science/r/KG-CF}.

BrainMAP: Learning Multiple Activation Pathways in Brain Networks

Functional Magnetic Resonance Image (fMRI) is commonly employed to study human brain activity, since it offers insight into the relationship between functional fluctuations and human behavior. To enhance analysis and comprehension of brain activity, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have been widely applied to the analysis of functional connectivities (FC) derived from fMRI data, due to their ability to capture the synergistic interactions among brain regions. However, in the human brain, performing complex tasks typically involves the activation of certain pathways, which could be represented as paths across graphs. As such, conventional GNNs struggle to learn from these pathways due to the long-range dependencies of multiple pathways. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel framework BrainMAP to learn Multiple Activation Pathways in Brain networks. BrainMAP leverages sequential models to identify long-range correlations among sequentialized brain regions and incorporates an aggregation module based on Mixture of Experts (MoE) to learn from multiple pathways. Our comprehensive experiments highlight BrainMAP's superior performance. Furthermore, our framework enables explanatory analyses of crucial brain regions involved in tasks. Our code is provided at https://github.com/LzyFischer/Graph-Mamba.

ST-FiT: Inductive Spatial-Temporal Forecasting with Limited Training Data

Spatial-temporal graphs are widely used in a variety of real-world applications. Spatial-Temporal Graph Neural Networks (STGNNs) have emerged as a powerful tool to extract meaningful insights from this data. However, in real-world applications, most nodes may not possess any available temporal data during training. For example, the pandemic dynamics of most cities on a geographical graph may not be available due to the asynchronous nature of outbreaks. Such a phenomenon disagrees with the training requirements of most existing spatial-temporal forecasting methods, which jeopardizes their effectiveness and thus blocks broader deployment. In this paper, we propose to formulate a novel problem of inductive forecasting with limited training data. In particular, given a spatial-temporal graph, we aim to learn a spatial-temporal forecasting model that can be easily generalized onto those nodes without any available temporal training data. To handle this problem, we propose a principled framework named ST-FiT. ST-FiT consists of two key learning components: temporal data augmentation and spatial graph topology learning. With such a design, ST-FiT can be used on top of any existing STGNNs to achieve superior performance on the nodes without training data. Extensive experiments verify the effectiveness of ST-FiT in multiple key perspectives.

PyOD 2: A Python Library for Outlier Detection with LLM-powered Model Selection

Outlier detection (OD), also known as anomaly detection, is a critical machine learning (ML) task with applications in fraud detection, network intrusion detection, clickstream analysis, recommendation systems, and social network moderation. Among open-source libraries for outlier detection, the Python Outlier Detection (PyOD) library is the most widely adopted, with over 8,500 GitHub stars, 25 million downloads, and diverse industry usage. However, PyOD currently faces three limitations: (1) insufficient coverage of modern deep learning algorithms, (2) fragmented implementations across PyTorch and TensorFlow, and (3) no automated model selection, making it hard for non-experts. To address these issues, we present PyOD Version 2 (PyOD 2), which integrates 12 state-of-the-art deep learning models into a unified PyTorch framework and introduces a large language model (LLM)-based pipeline for automated OD model selection. These improvements simplify OD workflows, provide access to 45 algorithms, and deliver robust performance on various datasets. In this paper, we demonstrate how PyOD 2 streamlines the deployment and automation of OD models and sets a new standard in both research and industry. PyOD 2 is accessible at [https://github.com/yzhao062/pyod](https://github.com/yzhao062/pyod). This study aligns with the Web Mining and Content Analysis track, addressing topics such as the robustness of Web mining methods and the quality of algorithmically-generated Web data.

Graph Neural Networks Are More Than Filters: Revisiting and Benchmarking from A Spectral Perspective

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have achieved remarkable success in various graph-based learning tasks. While their performance is often attributed to the powerful neighborhood aggregation mechanism, recent studies suggest that other components such as non-linear layers may also significantly affecting how GNNs process the input graph data in the spectral domain. Such evidence challenges the prevalent opinion that neighborhood aggregation mechanisms dominate the behavioral characteristics of GNNs in the spectral domain. To demystify such a conflict, this paper introduces a comprehensive benchmark to measure and evaluate GNNs' capability in capturing and leveraging the information encoded in different frequency components of the input graph data. Specifically, we first conduct an exploratory study demonstrating that GNNs can flexibly yield outputs with diverse frequency components even when certain frequencies are absent or filtered out from the input graph data. We then formulate a novel research problem of measuring and benchmarking the performance of GNNs from a spectral perspective. To take an initial step towards a comprehensive benchmark, we design an evaluation protocol supported by comprehensive theoretical analysis. Finally, we introduce a comprehensive benchmark on real-world datasets, revealing insights that challenge prevalent opinions from a spectral perspective. We believe that our findings will open new avenues for future advancements in this area. Our implementations can be found at: https://github.com/yushundong/Spectral-benchmark.

Political-LLM: Large Language Models in Political Science

In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have been widely adopted in political science tasks such as election prediction, sentiment analysis, policy impact assessment, and misinformation detection. Meanwhile, the need to systematically understand how LLMs can further revolutionize the field also becomes urgent. In this work, we--a multidisciplinary team of researchers spanning computer science and political science--present the first principled framework termed Political-LLM to advance the comprehensive understanding of integrating LLMs into computational political science. Specifically, we first introduce a fundamental taxonomy classifying the existing explorations into two perspectives: political science and computational methodologies. In particular, from the political science perspective, we highlight the role of LLMs in automating predictive and generative tasks, simulating behavior dynamics, and improving causal inference through tools like counterfactual generation; from a computational perspective, we introduce advancements in data preparation, fine-tuning, and evaluation methods for LLMs that are tailored to political contexts. We identify key challenges and future directions, emphasizing the development of domain-specific datasets, addressing issues of bias and fairness, incorporating human expertise, and redefining evaluation criteria to align with the unique requirements of computational political science. Political-LLM seeks to serve as a guidebook for researchers to foster an informed, ethical, and impactful use of Artificial Intelligence in political science. Our online resource is available at: http://political-llm.org/.