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How can we test AI performance? This question seems trivial, but it isn't. Standard benchmarks often have problems such as in-distribution and small-size test sets, oversimplified metrics, unfair comparisons, and short-term outcome pressure. As a consequence, good performance on standard benchmarks does not guarantee success in real-world scenarios. To address these problems, we present Touchstone, a large-scale collaborative segmentation benchmark of 9 types of abdominal organs. This benchmark is based on 5,195 training CT scans from 76 hospitals around the world and 5,903 testing CT scans from 11 additional hospitals. This diverse test set enhances the statistical significance of benchmark results and rigorously evaluates AI algorithms across various out-of-distribution scenarios. We invited 14 inventors of 19 AI algorithms to train their algorithms, while our team, as a third party, independently evaluated these algorithms on three test sets. In addition, we also evaluated pre-existing AI frameworks--which, differing from algorithms, are more flexible and can support different algorithms--including MONAI from NVIDIA, nnU-Net from DKFZ, and numerous other open-source frameworks. We are committed to expanding this benchmark to encourage more innovation of AI algorithms for the medical domain., Comment: Accepted to NeurIPS-2024

Young star-forming regions in massive environments are ideal test beds to study the influence of surroundings on the evolution of disks around low-mass stars. We explore two distant young clusters, IC 1848-East and West located in the massive W5 complex. These clusters are unique due to their similar (distance, age, and extinction) yet distinct (stellar density and FUV radiation fields) physical properties. We use deep multi-band photometry in optical, near-IR, and mid-IR wavelengths complete down to the substellar limit in at least five bands. We trace the spectral energy distribution of the sources to identify the young pre-main sequence members in the region and derive their physical parameters. The disk fraction for the East and West clusters down to 0.1 M$_\odot$ was found to be $\sim$27$\pm$2% (N$_{disk}$=184, N$_{diskless}$=492) and $\sim$17$\pm$1% (N$_{disk}$=173, N$_{diskless}$=814), respectively. While no spatial variation in the disk fraction is observed, these values are lower than those in other nearby young clusters. Investigating the cause of this decrease, we find a correlation with the intense feedback from massive stars throughout the cluster area. We also identified the disk sources undergoing accretion and observed the mass accretion rates to exhibit a positive linear relationship with the stellar host mass and an inverse relationship with stellar age. Our findings suggest that the environment significantly influences the dissipation of disks in both clusters. These distant clusters, characterized by their unique attributes, can serve as templates for future studies in outer galaxy regions, offering insights into the influence of feedback mechanisms on star and planetary formation., Comment: Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). 18 pages, 11 figures, 1 table

Diffusion models excel at creating visually impressive images but often struggle to generate images with a specified topology. The Betti number, which represents the number of structures in an image, is a fundamental measure in topology. Yet, diffusion models fail to satisfy even this basic constraint. This limitation restricts their utility in applications requiring exact control, like robotics and environmental modeling. To address this, we propose TopoDiffusionNet (TDN), a novel approach that enforces diffusion models to maintain the desired topology. We leverage tools from topological data analysis, particularly persistent homology, to extract the topological structures within an image. We then design a topology-based objective function to guide the denoising process, preserving intended structures while suppressing noisy ones. Our experiments across four datasets demonstrate significant improvements in topological accuracy. TDN is the first to integrate topology with diffusion models, opening new avenues of research in this area., Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, 7 tables

The emergence of Vision-Language Models (VLMs) represents a significant advancement in integrating computer vision with Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate detailed text descriptions from visual inputs. Despite their growing importance, the security of VLMs, particularly against backdoor attacks, is under explored. Moreover, prior works often assume attackers have access to the original training data, which is often unrealistic. In this paper, we address a more practical and challenging scenario where attackers must rely solely on Out-Of-Distribution (OOD) data. We introduce VLOOD (Backdooring Vision-Language Models with Out-of-Distribution Data), a novel approach with two key contributions: (1) demonstrating backdoor attacks on VLMs in complex image-to-text tasks while minimizing degradation of the original semantics under poisoned inputs, and (2) proposing innovative techniques for backdoor injection without requiring any access to the original training data. Our evaluation on image captioning and visual question answering (VQA) tasks confirms the effectiveness of VLOOD, revealing a critical security vulnerability in VLMs and laying the foundation for future research on securing multimodal models against sophisticated threats.

Spintronic-based neuromorphic hardware offers high-density and rapid data processing at nanoscale lengths by leveraging magnetic configurations like skyrmion and domain walls. Here, we present the maximal hardware implementation of a convolutional neural network (CNN) based on a compact multi-bit skyrmion-based synapse and a hybrid CMOS domain wall-based circuit for activation and max-pooling functionalities. We demonstrate the micromagnetic design and operation of a circular bilayer skyrmion system mimicking a scalable artificial synapse, demonstrated up to 6-bit (64 states) with an ultra-low energy consumption of 0.87 fJ per state update. We further show that the synaptic weight modulation is achieved by the perpendicular current interaction with the labyrinth-maze like uniaxial anisotropy profile, inducing skyrmionic gyration, thereby enabling long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) operations. Furthermore, we present a simultaneous rectified linear (ReLU) activation and max pooling circuitry featuring a SOT-based domain wall ReLU with a power consumption of 4.73 $\mu$W. The ReLU function, stabilized by a parabolic uniaxial anisotropy profile, encodes domain wall positions into continuous resistance states coupled with the HSPICE circuit simulator. Our integrated skyrmion and domain wall-based spintronic hardware achieves 98.07% accuracy in convolutional neural network (CNN) based pattern recognition task, consuming 110 mW per image., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures

Spintronic nano-oscillators can generate tunable microwave signals that find a wide range of applications in the field of telecommunication to modern neuromorphic computing systems. Among other spintronic devices, a magnetic skyrmion is a promising candidate for the next generation of low-power devices due to its small size and topological stability. In this work, we propose a multi-channel oscillator design based on the synthetic anti-ferromagnetic (SAF) skyrmion pair. The mitigation of the skyrmion Hall effect in SAF and the associated decimation of the Magnus force endows the proposed oscillator with an ultra-high frequency of 41GHz and a multi-channel frequency output driven by the same current. The ultrahigh operational frequency represents an $\sim$342 times improvement compared to the monolayer single skyrmion oscillator featuring a constant uniaxial anisotropy profile. Using micromagnetic simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed multi-channel oscillator design by introducing multi-channel nanotracks along with multiple skyrmions for enhanced frequency operation. The ultrahigh operational frequency and multi-channel output are attributed to three key factors: The oscillator design accounting for a finite spin-flip length of the spacer (such as Ru) material, tangential velocity proportionality on input spin current along with weak dependence on the radius of rotation of the skyrmion-pair, skyrmion interlocking in the channel enabled by the multi-channel high Ku rings and skyrmion-skyrmion repulsion, therefore resulting ultrahigh frequency and multi-channel outputs.

Young stellar clusters are predominantly the hub of star formation and hence, ideal to perform comprehensive studies over the least explored sub-stellar regime. Various unanswered questions like the mass distribution in brown dwarf regime and the effect of diverse cluster environment on brown dwarf formation efficiency still plague the scientific community. The nearby young cluster, IC 1396 with its feedback-driven environment, is ideal to conduct such study. In this paper we adopt a multi-wavelength approach, using deep Subaru HSC, Gaia DR3, Pan-STARRS, UKIDSS/2MASS photometry and machine learning techniques to identify the cluster members complete down to $\sim$ 0.03 M$_{\odot}$ in the central 22$^{\prime}$ area of IC 1396. We identify 458 cluster members including 62 brown dwarfs which are used to determine mass distribution in the region. We obtain a star-to-brown dwarf ratio of $\sim$ 6 for a stellar mass range 0.03 -- 1 M$_{\odot}$ in the studied cluster. The brown dwarf fraction is observed to increase across the cluster as radial distance from the central OB-stars increases. This study also compiles 15 young stellar clusters to check the variation of star-to-brown dwarf ratio relative to stellar density and UV flux ranging within 4-2500 stars pc$^{-2}$ and 0.7-7.3 G$_{0}$ respectively. The brown dwarf fraction is observed to increase with stellar density but the results about the influence of incident UV flux are inconclusive within this range. This is the deepest study of IC 1396 as of yet and it will pave the way to understand various aspects of brown dwarfs using spectroscopic observations in future., Comment: 17 pages, 24 figures, 4 tables