#01Oct 25, 2026
cs.LG
Constrained Gradient Equilibrium: Approachability under Locally Constrained Adversaries
Kaicheng Zhang, Lujing Zhang, Yifei Pang and 3 more
Gradient equilibrium (GEQ) is a recent framework in online learning that requires the time-averaged gradients along the learner's trajectory to vanish. We study GEQ when the learner is constrained and ask when such an equilibrium remains achievable in an adversarial environment. We first show that constrained GEQ (CGEQ) can be impossible even under simple and slowly varying constraints, motivating imposing local temporal structure on the adversary. We then develop an approachability framework for CGEQ under locally constrained adversaries, and obtain necessary and sufficient characterizations in the spirit of classical Blackwell approachability. Beyond these theoretical characterizations, we provide an algorithmic principle that converts window-wise no-regret learners into CGEQ algorithms under a local feasibility condition with margin. Experiments on synthetic and real data demonstrate that the resulting algorithms perform strongly in both achieving GEQ and respecting the constraints.
#02Oct 25, 2026
cs.SD
EmoNet: A Lightweight Attention-Based CNN for Speech Emotion Recognition
Muhammad Moiz Khalid, Abdur Rehman Tariq, Muhammad Okasha Yamin
Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) is a fundamental task in affective computing that enables applications such as mental health assessment, human-computer interaction, and automated customer support systems. Accurate emotion classification from speech remains challenging due to variations in speaker style, acoustic conditions, and the high computational cost of modern deep learning approaches. Many existing systems depend on large transformer-based architectures that require substantial computational resources, making them less suitable for real-time or resource-constrained environments. This research proposes EmoNet, a lightweight deep learning framework for speech emotion classification across seven emotion categories. The model is built on a four-block depthwise separable CNN encoder with squeeze-and-excitation attention and residual connections, combined with a Bidirectional LSTM for temporal feature learning and a multi-head attention pooling mechanism for improved representation. A comprehensive 134-channel acoustic feature set alongside data augmentation techniques including audio-level perturbations and SpecAugment is employed to improve robustness under diverse acoustic conditions. Evaluated on a combined dataset of TESS, RAVDESS, and SAVEE, EmoNet achieves a test accuracy of 96.75% with only 4.11 million parameters. The proposed model outperforms its reproduced baseline and remains competitive with significantly larger state-of-the-art architectures.
#03Oct 25, 2026
cond-mat.mtrl-sci
Deep Scientific Reasoning under Physical Constraints: Structure-Aware Spectrum Prediction
Yingheng Wang, Tao Yu, Shufeng Kong and 3 more
Structured scientific spectra encode rich physical information while obeying hard constraints, such as conservation laws and characteristic spectral geometry. Accurate prediction of these spectra is central to materials discovery, yet existing methods often treat them as unconstrained sequences and therefore fail to enforce the underlying physical structure. Taking electronic density of states (eDOS) as the prototypical example, we introduce DeepSciReasoner, a general paradigm for predicting scientific spectra under physical constraints. The framework combines structure-aware spectrum decoding with constraint-preserving physical reasoning, allowing predictions to capture rich spectral structure while respecting the underlying physics. We evaluate DeepSciReasoner on eDOS, phonon density of states (phDOS), X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES), and Raman spectra, where it substantially improves prediction accuracy while maintaining physical consistency. These results establish DeepSciReasoner as a reusable blueprint for structured scientific spectrum prediction under hard physical constraints.
#04Oct 25, 2026
cs.LG
Resolving the Mobility-Equity-Emissions Trilemma: A Causal Machine Learning Framework for Dynamic Tolling Policy
Christian Mulomba Mukendi
We propose a causal machine learning framework to integrate dynamic tolling for mobility, equity, and climate objectives, resolving a long-standing policy trilemma. Using Double Machine Learning, we estimate zone-type-specific treatment effects, showing that commercial zones yield nearly twice the delay reduction of residential zones. Our adaptive quota mechanism expands residential coverage 34-fold while preserving 93% of total delay savings and sustaining high return on investment. The framework delivers climate co-benefits, reducing emissions by 743.5 metric tons of CO2 (valued at 141 USD) via congestion-sensitive pricing under moderate traffic conditions with sensitivity bounds from 557.6 to 929.3 tons. Crucially, we uncover a policy-invariant toll range where performance remains robust across demand scenarios, simplifying implementation. This study reveals critical, previously unidentified insights, such as a policy-invariant toll range, that can significantly simplify real-world implementation. Validated on synthetic data mirroring real-world networks, our methodological advances lay the foundation for future public deployment.
#05Oct 25, 2026
cond-mat.mtrl-sci
TCSP3.0: Template-Based Crystal Structure Prediction with Coefficient-Preserving Element Substitution and Structural Diversity
Ying Feng, Jeffrey Hu, Lai Wei and 5 more
Template-based crystal structure prediction (CSP) transfers a known crystal structure to a new composition by element substitution, so its accuracy depends on retrieving suitable templates, mapping elements and ranking the resulting candidates correctly. Auditing the original TCSP2.0 implementation on the T180 benchmark, we found that 469 of its 2,347 selected structures (20%) have the wrong composition, caused by element mappings that ignore stoichiometric coefficients and by sequential text substitution that cascades or corrupts element symbols. We propose TCSP3.0, which enforces coefficient-preserving mappings, substitutes species simultaneously on parsed structures and validates every candidate's composition and cell. It further adds periodic-number retrieval, soft oxidation-state evidence, radius-compatibility scoring, structural deduplication, and ORB-v3 machine-learning-potential relaxation and energy ranking of its candidates, as used by deep generative CSP baselines. TCSP3.0 achieves Top-1 and Top-20 match rates of 72.2% and 90.6% on T180, compared with 28.3% and 45.6% for TCSP2.0, and a Top-20 match rate of 74.0% on a new 800-target benchmark (T800). On T180 it also outperforms PNcsp+ and deep generative models CrystalFlow and MaskGXT (Top-1 72.2% versus at most 63.9%). Even without relaxation, TCSP3.0 reaches 67.8% at Top-1 and 90.6% at Top-20 in a median of 28 s per target on two CPU cores, about ten times faster than CrystalFlow. Paired ten-arm ablations on T180 and T800 show that most of the improvement comes from the correctness fixes; structural deduplication significantly improves the Top-5 match rate, embedding-based retrieval is required for coverage, and the remaining scoring features have small or null effects.