This study focuses on evaluating proactive communication and diagnostic capabilities of medical Large Language Models (LLMs), which directly impact their effectiveness in patient consultations. In typical medical scenarios, doctors often ask a set of questions to gain a comprehensive understanding of patients’ conditions. We argue that single-turn question-answering tasks such as MultiMedQA are insufficient for evaluating LLMs’ medical consultation abilities. To address this limitation, we developed an evaluation benchmark called Multi-turn Medical Dialogue Evaluation (MMD-Eval), specifically designed to evaluate the proactive communication and diagnostic capabilities of medical LLMs during consultations. Considering the high cost and potential for hallucinations in LLMs, we innovatively trained a task-oriented dialogue system to simulate patients engaging in dialogues with the medical LLMs using our structured medical records dataset. This approach enabled us to generate multi-turn dialogue data. Subsequently, we evaluate the communication skills and medical expertise of the medical LLMs. All resources associated with this study will be made publicly available.

The stock market is a complex, nonlinear, and sentiment-driven system where price movements are influenced not only by quantitative indicators but also by market sentiment. While existing approaches—ranging from traditional time series models to deep learning—have made progress in modeling financial data, they often neglect the affective dimensions that drive investor behavior. To address this limitation, we propose a hybrid stock prediction model based on Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), which captures both short-term fluctuations and long-term dependencies in time series data. Furthermore, we integrate sentiment features derived from financial news using natural language processing techniques, allowing the model to incorporate qualitative insights alongside numerical data. Experimental results across multiple stocks show that our model outperforms existing methods in terms of accuracy and robustness. This study demonstrates the value of combining affective computing with deep temporal modeling for more reliable and socially aware financial forecasting.

Molecular residual disease (MRD) detection, initially developed for hematologic malignancies, has become a critical biomarker for monitoring solid tumors. MRD detection primarily relies on circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) analysis using next-generation sequencing, offering high sensitivity and broad genomic coverage. However, challenges remain in designing cost-effective panels that maximize mutation detection while maintaining biological relevance. Fixed panels often lack sufficient patient-specific mutation coverage, while WES-based personalized MRD assays, despite their high sensitivity, are costly and less accessible. We developed a tumor comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP)-informed personalized MRD assay to detect tumor-derived mutations, which allowed us to design patient-specific personalized panels and meanwhile, provide a cost-effective alternative to whole exome sequencing (WES). To address these limitations, we developed MRDtarget, a heuristic multivariate Gaussian model-based targeted capture region selection method. By expanding beyond traditional hotspot regions, MRDtarget optimizes variant tracking for MRD detection, significantly improving sensitivity. Using a Bayesian inference-based heuristic approach, MRDtarget integrates multi-feature informativeness rates to identify optimal genomic regions for capture. Experimental results demonstrate that MRDtarget enables the detection of more variants per patient. This study underscores the importance of rational panel design to improve MRD sensitivity and provides a novel approach to enhance precision diagnostics and treatment for solid tumor patients.

Most existing wideband signal detection and recognition (WSDR) methods rely on diverse, large-scale, and well-labeled training data, which are often difficult to obtain in practical application scenarios such as non-cooperative environments and novel signaling regimes. In this article, we propose a method for constructing a virtual signal large model (VSLM) and applying it to tackle the WSDR challenge under few-shot or even cross-domain few-shot scenarios. Firstly, we design two plug-and-play modules, virtual sample generation (VSG) and virtual category generation (VCG), for VSLM, respectively. VSG simulates the local and overall relationship between the burst signal and the constant signal, which is mainly completed by extracting time-frequency meta-block and data enhancement. Based on VSG and the multi-label concept, we further create virtual novel categories by injecting customizable semantic information into meta-blocks. Then, we further propose a dual decoupled network (DDN) to train the VSLM. DDN enhances signal details by decoupling low gray values (DLGV) in time-frequency representation, and alleviates conflicts during multi-task joint optimization by decoupling spectrum localization and signal classification. Finally, based on the wideband spectrogram dataset, extensive experiments have validated that our proposed methods can significantly improve the performance of WSDR under few-shot conditions.

In the face of emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19, timely government intervention is crucial, as swift policy actions can effectively prevent greater losses. However, policymakers often need to balance multiple conflicting objectives. The lack of high-quality data and suitable analytical tools poses significant challenges for policy evaluation, especially in multi-objective decision-making, where accurately assessing the impact of interventions becomes even more difficult. To address this issue, this paper proposes a real-time data-driven policy monitoring method for dynamically tracking the effects of policy interventions. We introduce a new non-parametric one-sided test control chart, leveraging the interpretability and ease of implementation of control charts to monitor risk levels across various policies. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method in policy monitoring.

In genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and candidate gene studies (CGS), appropriate multiple testing correction methods can effectively address linkage disequilibrium (LD) blocks and are crucial for controlling the family-wise error rate (FWER) while ensuring the reliability of results. In our recent research, we observed that when the number of independent effective Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) is relatively small, existing multiple testing correction methods struggle to effectively control the FWER at 0.05 and lack robustness. This study proposes an enhanced method that builds upon the Moskvina and Schmidt approach by incorporating additional SNP correlation information, allowing for precise control of the FWER at 0.05 with limited independent effective SNPs. We also leverage Monte Carlo integration on a GPU to accelerate the computation of significance thresholds. Our method was evaluated through both simulation studies and real genotype datasets, demonstrating superior performance and robustness compared to existing methods.

Monitoring rare health-related events using control charts is crucial for timely detecting potential changes in healthcare scenarios. For example, sequentially testing the level of changes in infectious disease patient numbers helps prepare before an epidemic. Unlike general health-related events, the observation of rare ones often involves an excess of zeros, making it more appropriate to use the zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) distribution rather than the classical Poisson. Although residual-based charts have attracted significant attention in this field, few studies have explored how to appropriately select residuals with different advantages in the complex situations like healthcare scenarios. Therefore, in this paper, we propose LMR-EWMA, a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO)-based multivariate residual exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control chart, to automatically select the optimal residuals for monitoring changes (i.e., shifts) in the number of rare health-related events. Additionally, we have innovatively designed a bi-directional moving mechanism to address the limitation of current research in distinguishing the practical significance of shifts. Experimental results on three simulation cases and two real datasets demonstrate that LMR-EWMA outperforms existing charts in monitoring performance.

Batch effects, caused by non-biological variations such as differences in laboratory conditions, reagent lots, or personnel, are a substantial source of noise in gene expression data. Accurately correcting these effects is crucial for valid biological inferences. However, the majority of existing batch effect correction algorithms are prone to overcorrection, where biologically meaningful signals are mistakenly identified as noise, especially in repeated measurement studies where time is confounded with batch. The failure to accurately distinguish between batch-related and biologically relevant variation leads to a loss of critical biological information. This paper presents RMComBat, an enhancement of the widely-used ComBat framework, which addresses this limitation by replacing the general linear model with a linear mixed-effects model. RMComBat incorporates subject-specific random intercepts to correct for sample correlation and enhance the preservation of biological signals. We tested RMComBat and several popular algorithms on simulated and real repeated measurement gene expression datasets, evaluating their performance through visual inspections and quantitative metrics. Results indicate that although most algorithms can reduce batch effects, they often do so at the cost of removing true biological signals. RMComBat demonstrates superior performance in preventing overcorrection, providing a more balanced and biologically informative correction in repeated measurement studies, so making it a valuable tool for improving the accuracy of gene expression analyses.

Accurate detection of copy number variations (CNVs) from sequencing data is crucial in many complex traits and diseases research. Although many CNV detection algorithms have been developed, challenges in precisely identifying CNVs persist. The core statistical model of these algorithms cannot self-adjust, which limits their adaptability to heterogeneous samples and reduces detection accuracy. address this challenge, we reframed the CNV detection problem as a quality control issue and incorporated adaptive mechanisms. We developed adapCNV, a novel adaptive CNV detection framework that integrates machine learning with optimization control. This framework enables dynamic adaptation of primary parameters based on sample features. We defined a quantifiable metric, RD fluctuation values, to assess signal characteristics when the algorithm accurately detects CNVs. We then employed machine learning techniques extract features from panel sequencing data, select initial parameter values for samples, and determine optimal RD fluctuation values. By adopting adaptive model predictive control (AMPC), adapCNV performs optimizations within rolling window. It dynamically adjusts the primary parameters based on error feedback from RD fluctuation values. This adaptive control strategy enables dynamic adjustment automatically match the characteristics of panel sequencing samples, significantly enhancing overall detection quality. The performance of this framework was validated with simulated data. Comparative analysis demonstrated that the proposed method outperforms the baseline approach, particularly in detecting small CNVs. The adapCNV framework is particularly suitable for panel sequencing, which may have broad applications in clinical practice. This novel approach from quality control perspective introduces a new paradigm for CNV detection.

Copy number variations are crucial in cancer research, but their detection through next-generation sequencing is often hindered by read biases, particularly in complex genomic regions. Existing bias-correction methods address common issues like GC content but often fail in regions with repetitive sequences or segmental duplications, leading to false-positive CNVs. We propose refMask, a hybrid Gaussian model-based method that dynamically identifies low-confidence regions in the reference genome, correcting read biases and improving CNV detection accuracy. By integrating features from hg38 and T2T genomes, refMask tailors a custom blacklist for each sequencing sample, enhancing the reliability of CNV detection across diverse conditions. Our method provides a more accurate and flexible solution compared to current fixed blacklists, offering improved performance in challenging genomic regions.

Good and stable surgical quality is of great significance to ensure the life safety of patients and spare patients unnecessary health burdens. The variable life-adjusted display (VLAD) is a popular assessment method for surgical quality and some VLAD-based control charts have been proposed to motivate the quality improvement. However, existing charts can only monitor the average level of surgical quality by detecting the changes of VLAD’s mean, but lack a mechanism to monitor the stability based on VLAD’s variance. The volatile surgical quality which can hardly be considered good will make existing charts provide delay alarms. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a risk-adjusted exponential weighted moving average (EWMA) control chart to monitor the mean and variance of VLAD simultaneously, named MVV-EWMA. Firstly, we give the explicit form of VLAD’s variance. Then, the EWMA statistics for the mean and variance are respectively constructed and integrated by the generalized likelihood ratio test. Moreover, two auxiliary mechanisms are adopted to enhance MVV-EWMA’s monitoring ability. Both the results of simulation and case study show that MVV-EWMA is not only able to effectively monitor the stability of surgical quality, but also has the best performance compared to existing chart.

Specific emitter identification (SEI) is crucial for attacking and defending Internet of Things (IoT) devices in untrusted scenarios or battlefield environments. However, existing SEI methods usually require annotation information, which is often unavailable in noncooperative communications and untrusted scenarios. In this article, we propose a signal contrastive self-supervised clustering (SCSC) method for unsupervised SEI applications. First, we propose SCSC with 1-D fingerprint pyramid feature extractor (1D-FPFE) for obtaining hierarchical subtle features of emitter signals. Then, we propose a bit-pulse selection (BPS) strategy and several signal data augmentation methods. By constructing signal positive and negative instance pairs through data augmentation, our approach generates cluster preference representations in a contrastive self-supervised learning manner. Extensive experimental results based on communication burst emitter dataset show that SCSC achieves an accuracy improvement of about 26% over the current best communication signal clustering algorithm. Moreover, SCSC also exhibits good performance and generalization for 30 emitter clustering and few-shot unlabeled signal clustering.

Copy number variation (CNV) is a class of key biomarkers in many complex traits and diseases. Detecting CNV from sequencing data is a substantial bioinformatics problem and a standard requirement in clinical practice. Although many proposed CNV detection approaches exist, the core statistical model at their foundation is weakened by two critical computational issues: (i) identifying the optimal setting on the sliding window and (ii) correcting for bias and noise. We designed a statistical process model to overcome these limitations by calculating regional read depths via an exponentially weighted moving average strategy. A one-run detection of CNVs of various lengths is then achieved by a dynamic sliding window, whose size is self-adopted according to the weighted averages. We also designed a novel bias/noise reduction model, accompanied by the moving average, which can handle complicated patterns and extend training data. This model, called PEcnv, accurately detects CNVs ranging from kb-scale to chromosome-arm level. The model performance was validated with simulation samples and real samples. Comparative analysis showed that PEcnv outperforms current popular approaches. Notably, PEcnv provided considerable advantages in detecting small CNVs (1 kb-1 Mb) in panel sequencing data. Thus, PEcnv fills the gap left by existing methods focusing on large CNVs. PEcnv may have broad applications in clinical testing where panel sequencing is the dominant strategy. Availability and implementation: Source code is freely available at https://github.com/Sherwin-xjtu/PEcnv.

Identifying associations between genomic variants and phenotypes has always been an interesting research field of population genetics, which is of great significance for studying the pathogenesis of complex diseases and supporting clinical assistant decision making. Nowadays, many identification methods have been proposed to find the associations between variants and phenotypes, such as GWAS and pheWAS, and have made excellent achievements in pathological research and clinical practice. However, the existing methods only focus on single phenotype-multiple variants or single variant-multiple phenotypes, but not on multiple variants-multiple phenotypes. In the view of the fact that complex diseases often have several subtypes which differ greatly in variants and phenotypes, focusing only on single variant or single phenotype is far from enough and limits the ability of identification of those methods. Therefore, we propose a heuristic method with an AFSA framework on the solution space to identify associations between multiple variants and multiple phenotypes. In our method, each fish carries two logic trees that respectively represent the associations between variants and the associations between phenotypes. The logic trees will be iteratively updated to find a better solution according to the preset update strategies. When the iteration stop condition is reached, the algorithm will stop and output the optimal fish. The logical expression represented by the logic trees carried by the optimal fish is the associations we find. We validated the proposed method on the simulation data generated by hapgen2 and PhenotypeSimulator, and took the ratio of the number of people that can be explained by the found logical expression as the index to evaluate the performance, which was called Coverage. We conducted 9 groups of experiments, each of which was different in the number of variants and phenotypes. The best Coverage of was from the group including 500 variants and 10 phenotypes, which reached 72.12%, and the worst result is from the group including 100 variants and 20 phenotypes, 31.73%. We also exhausted the simulation data to find the optimal logical expression and several most important logic rules to evaluate the results obtained by the method.

Performing direct matching among different modalities (like image and text) can benefit many tasks in computer vision, multimedia, information retrieval, and information fusion. Most of existing works focus on class-level image-text matching, called cross-modal retrieval , which attempts to propose a uniform model for matching images with all types of texts, for example, tags, sentences, and articles (long texts). Although cross-model retrieval alleviates the heterogeneous gap among visual and textual information, it can provide only a rough correspondence between two modalities. In this article, we propose a more precise image-text embedding method, image-sentence matching, which can provide heterogeneous matching in the instance level. The key issue for image-text embedding is how to make the distributions of the two modalities consistent in the embedding space. To address this problem, some previous works on the cross-model retrieval task have attempted to pull close their distributions by employing adversarial learning. However, the effectiveness of adversarial learning on image-sentence matching has not been proved and there is still not an effective method. Inspired by previous works, we propose to learn a modality-invariant image-text embedding for image-sentence matching by involving adversarial learning. On top of the triplet loss--based baseline, we design a modality classification network with an adversarial loss, which classifies an embedding into either the image or text modality. In addition, the multi-stage training procedure is carefully designed so that the proposed network not only imposes the image-text similarity constraints by ground-truth labels, but also enforces the image and text embedding distributions to be similar by adversarial learning. Experiments on two public datasets (Flickr30k and MSCOCO) demonstrate that our method yields stable accuracy improvement over the baseline model and that our results compare favorably to the state-of-the-art methods.

Although deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have significantly boosted the performance of many computer vision tasks, their complexities~(the size or the number of parameters) are also dramatically increased even with slight performance improvement. However, the larger network leads to more computation requirements, which are unfavorable to resource-constrained scenarios, such as the widely used embedded systems. In this paper, we tentatively explore the essential effect of CNN parameter layout, ıe, the allocation of parameters in the convolution layers, on the discriminative capability of CNN. Instead of enlarging the breadth or depth of networks, we attempt to improve the discriminative ability of CNN by changing its parameter layout under strict size constraint. Toward this end, a novel energy function is proposed to represent the CNN parameter layout, which makes it possible to model the relationship between the allocation of parameters in the convolution layers and the discriminative ability of CNN. According to extensive experimental results with plain CNN models and Residual Nets, we find that the higher the energy of a specific CNN parameter layout is, the better its discriminative ability is. Following this finding, we propose a novel approach to learn the better parameter layout. Experimental results on two public image classification datasets show that the CNN models with the learned parameter layouts achieve the better image classification results under strict size constraint.

Cross-media retrieval has received increasing interest in recent years, which aims to addressing the semantic correlation issues within rich media. As two key aspects, cross-media representation and indexing have been studied for dealing with cross-media similarity measure and the scalability issue, respectively. In this paper, we propose a new cross-media hashing scheme, called Centroid Approaching Cross-Media Hashing (CAMH), to handle both cross-media representation and indexing simultaneously. Different from existing indexing methods, the proposed method introduces semantic category information into the learning procedure, leading to more exact hash codes of multiple media type instances. In addition, we present a comparative study of cross-media indexing methods under a unique evaluation framework. Extensive experiments on two commonly used datasets demonstrate the good performance in terms of search accuracy and time complexity.