#01Nov 9, 2026
cs.LG
Smartphone-Enabled Depth-Aware Transillumination Imaging for Detection of Chicken Breast Fillet Myopathies in Chicken Fillets
Chaitanya Pallerla, Ramesh Bahadur Bist, Yihong Feng and 6 more
Woody Breast (WB) myopathy is a major quality defect in broiler chickens characterized by fibrosis, increased tissue hardness, and altered structural properties that affect product quality. Conventional palpation is subjective and labor-intensive, while many non-destructive methods require specialized equipment or substantial computational resources. This study developed a smartphone-based transillumination and 3D point-cloud framework for non-destructive WB severity classification. A total of 267 chicken breast fillets, including normal breast (NB, n = 87), mild WB (MWB, n = 85), and severe WB (SWB, n = 95), were evaluated using RAW transillumination images and 3D point clouds acquired with an iPhone 16 Pro. A total of 91 features, comprising 14 image-derived, 76 geometric, and one physics-informed Beer-Lambert attenuation feature, were extracted. Partial correlation controlling for thickness revealed a significant association between image characteristics and WB severity (r = 0.413, p < 0.0001), indicating optical information independent of fillet geometry. SWB tissue exhibited approximately 26% greater light attenuation per unit thickness than NB. The 2D-only models achieved approximately 82% test accuracy, while the multimodal ensemble combining Fusion-DGCNN, XGBoost, and physics-guided logistic regression (PGLR) achieved approximately 90% accuracy. These findings demonstrate the complementary value of optical, geometric, and physics-informed features and establish the feasibility of smartphone-based, non-destructive WB severity assessment.
#02Nov 9, 2026
cs.LG
Clique Constraints for Exact Causal Structure Learning
Xiaoyu He, Pavel Rytíř, Petr Ryšavý and 1 more
Exact score-based causal structure learning supports explicit structural constraints and optimisation certificates, but its branch-and-cut search can be computationally demanding. We augment exact causal structure learning methods with an upper bound on the maximum clique size of the learned undirected skeleton, enforced at integer candidates through lazy cycle and clique constraints. On static linear-Gaussian Erdős-Rényi and scale-free DAGs, we evaluate callback order, alternative clique-cut policies, incumbent repair, fractional separation, and Big-M bounds. We report causal-recovery metrics jointly with optimality gaps, primal and dual bounds, node throughput, MIPSOL events, and callback cost. Two variants receive particular attention: B3 selects the most violated minimal (k+1)-clique inequality at each callback, whereas C3 repairs an infeasible integer candidate by deleting violating edges and refitting affected regression columns using QR-based least squares. The results do not indicate that clique constraints uniformly accelerate optimisation. However, their benefit depends on graph density, sample size, and cut-management policy, while large collections of correlated constraints can reduce node throughput. Tighter valid Big-M bounds reduced the fixed-budget optimality gap in most tested settings, without necessarily changing SHD or F1 at a fixed time limit. These findings characterize the computational trade-offs of clique-constrained exact causal learning, and identify selective separation and incumbent repair as promising directions.
#03Nov 9, 2026
cs.HC
Programming Prescience: Issues in Human Construction of Forecasting Bots
Priya Dhawka, Benjamin Wilson, Andrew Head
AI models' growing capacity for complex reasoning has made them attractive tools for forecasting, or the systematic prediction of the future based on past and present data. However, should AI forecasting systems be adopted, human builders will shoulder the work of building and evaluating them. In this paper, we explore what this work looks like with a qualitative interview study with 15 builders of forecasting bots, sampled from among successful participants in a recent AI forecasting competition. Our analysis surfaces the challenges around (1) tuning a bot to acquire factual research, (2) implementing coherent reasoning, and (3) understanding how well one's bot actually does. During their work, builders frequently introduced complexity that did not pay off, and tested in ways that were opportunistic and piecemeal. Our detailed account of their challenges helps clarify what problems should be targeted in upcoming innovations in process, tools, and human-AI teaming for forecasting.
#04Nov 9, 2026
cs.LG
Adaptive Quantization Preserves Fast Rates for TD Learning over Rate-Limited Channels
Sreejeet Maity, Aritra Mitra
Motivated by reinforcement learning subject to communication constraints, we study a policy evaluation problem with linear function approximation over a rate-limited channel. In our setup, an agent interacting with an unknown environment (modeled as a Markov Decision Process) transmits quantized estimates of a temporal-difference (TD) learning update direction to a server over a finite-capacity channel. Our goal is to investigate to what extent one can preserve the statistical convergence rates achievable when the channel has infinite capacity. To that end, we propose a new algorithm called Batched Adaptively Quantized TD (BAQ-TD), which uses batching to reduce the variance of the transmitted information, and adaptive quantization to encode innovations. We prove a high-probability finite-time error bound for BAQ-TD, and show that, above a certain finite channel capacity, BAQ-TD preserves the convergence rate of unquantized TD up to logarithmic factors. Specifically, for a $d$-dimensional value function parameter, we establish that transmitting a total of $\mathcal{O}(d \log(T))$ bits over a horizon of length $T$ suffices to achieve the order-optimal rate of $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(1/T)$, marking an exponential improvement in communication-complexity over prior work.
#05Nov 9, 2026
cs.DB
LUCQUE: A lung cancer screening dataset from Québec for reliable AI evaluation
Johanna Topalis, Yannick Lemaréchal, Gabriel Couture and 7 more
BACKGROUND: AI-based tools are expected to play a key role in lung cancer screening (LCS). The evaluation of these tools often relied on private datasets or fragmented public datasets with inconsistent availability of clinical data and expert nodule annotations. This has hindered reproducibility, comparability, and independent assessment of AI tools. To address these gaps, we present LUCQUE, a novel, large, comprehensively annotated dataset derived from LDCT lung cancer screening in Québec, which is accessible for reliable AI evaluation. METHODS: LUCQUE was curated and is hosted on PARADIM, a digital infrastructure supporting DICOM data de-identification, annotation, long-term storage and analysis. LDCT scans and clinical information were combined to a curated collection and complemented by voxel-level, expert-derived pulmonary nodule and cyst segmentations, and Lung-RADS-based lesion characteristics. Key dataset characteristics and statistics were reported, including participant demographics, imaging parameters, radiological findings, and segmented lesion characteristics. Dataset analyses were conducted according to PARADIM's model-to-data approach, in which user code is executed on the platform such that data remains on premise. RESULTS: LUCQUE currently comprises 1,678 LDCT baseline studies from 1,678 participants. Most studies were classified as Lung-RADS 2. A total of 1,776 pulmonary nodules and 60 cysts were annotated, with a median (interquartile range) volume of $89\,(56,\,159)\,\mathrm{mm}^3$ and $1,384\,(589,\,3793)\,\mathrm{mm}^3$ respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to publicly available LCS datasets, LUCQUE currently represents the largest accessible annotated real-world LCS dataset. Access to LUCQUE is provided via a model-to-data approach, enabling privacy-preserving, reproducible, and independent real-world evaluation of AI tools in LCS.