Annotations for image segmentation are expensive and time-consuming. In contrast to image segmentation, the task of object detection is in general easier in terms of the acquisition of labeled training data and the design of training models. In this paper, we combine the idea of unsupervised learning and a pretrained object-detection network to perform image segmentation, without using expensive segmentation labels. Specially, we designed a pretext task based on the sparse decomposition of object instances in videos to obtain the segmentation mask of the objects, which benefits from the sparsity of image instances and the inter-frame structure of videos. To improve the accuracy of identifying the ’right’ object, we used a pretrained object-detection network to provide the location information of the object instances, and propose an Object Location Segmentation (OLSeg) model of three branches with bounding box prior. The model is trained from videos and is able to capture the foreground, background and segmentation mask in a single image. The performance gain benefits from the sparsity of object instances (the foreground and background in our experiments) and the provided location information (bounding box prior), which work together to produce a comprehensive and robust visual representation for the input. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model boosts the performance effectively on various image segmentation benchmarks.

The never-ending emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variations of concern (VOCs) has challenged the whole world for pandemic control. In order to develop effective drugs and vaccines, one needs to efficiently simulate SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor binding domain (RBD) mutations and identify high-risk variants. We pretrain a large protein language model with approximately 408 million protein sequences and construct a high-throughput screening for the prediction of binding affinity and antibody escape. As the first work on SARS-CoV-2 RBD mutation simulation, we successfully identify mutations in the RBD regions of 5 VOCs and can screen millions of potential variants in seconds. Our workflow scales to 4096 NPUs with 96.5% scalability and 493.9× speedup in mixed precision computing, while achieving a peak performance of 366.8 PFLOPS (reaching 34.9% theoretical peak) on Pengcheng Cloudbrain-II. Our method paves the way for simulating coronavirus evolution in order to prepare for a future pandemic that will inevitably take place. Our models are released at https://github.com/ZhiweiNiepku/SARS-CoV-2_mutation_simulation to facilitate future related work. Justification: We develop a novel multi-constraint variation prediction framework to simulate SARS-CoV-2 RBD mutations, reaching a peak performance of 366.8 PFLOPS with 96.5% scalability and achieving 493.9× speedup. Our method facilitates the prediction and prioritization of future high-risk variants for the early deployment of drugs and vaccines. Performance attributes: Overview of the problem: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly to more than 200 countries or regions since December 2019. Due to its high infectivity, there have been over 645 million confirmed cases, including approximately 6.6 million deaths, reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) as of December 2022 ¹ . In addition to being a serious threat to human health, COVID-19 has had a catastrophic impact on the global economy.

A surveillance system with more than hundreds of cameras and much fewer monitors strongly relies on manual scheduling and inspections from monitoring personnel. A monitoring method which improves the surveillance performance by analyzing and learning from a large amount of manual operation logs is proposed in this paper. Compared to fixed rules or existing computer-vision methods, the proposed method can more effectively learn from the operators’ behaviors and incorporate their intentions into the monitoring strategy. To the best of our knowledge, this method is the first to apply a monitoring-strategy recommendation model containing a global encoder and a local encoder in monitoring systems. The local encoder can adaptively select important items in the operating sequence to capture the main purpose of the operator, while the global encoder is used to summarize the behavior of the entire sequence. Two experiments are conducted on two data sets. Compared with att-RNN and att-GRU, the joint coding model in experiment 1 improves the Recall@20 by 9.4% and 4.6%, respectively, and improves the MRR@20 by 5.49% and 3.86%, respectively. In experiment 2, compared with att-RNN and att-GRU, the joint coding model improves by 11.8% and 6.2% on Recall@20, and improves by 7.02% and 5.16% on MRR@20, respectively. The results illustrate the effectiveness of the our model in monitoring systems.

Real-time dynamic path planning in complex traffic environments presents challenges, such as varying traffic volumes and signal wait times. Traditional static routing algorithms like Dijkstra and A* compute shortest paths but often fail under dynamic conditions. Recent Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches offer improvements but tend to focus on local optima, risking dead-ends or boundary issues. This paper proposes a novel approach based on causal inference for real-time dynamic path planning, balancing global and local optimality. We first use the static Dijkstra algorithm to compute a globally optimal baseline path. A distributed control strategy then guides vehicles along this path. At intersections, DynamicRouteGPT performs real-time decision-making for local path selection, considering real-time traffic, driving preferences, and unexpected events. DynamicRouteGPT integrates Markov chains, Bayesian inference, and large-scale pretrained language models like Llama3 8B to provide an efficient path planning solution. It dynamically adjusts to traffic scenarios and driver preferences and requires no pre-training, offering broad applicability across road networks. A key innovation is the construction of causal graphs for counterfactual reasoning, optimizing path decisions. Experimental results show that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in real-time dynamic path planning for multiple vehicles while providing explainable path selections, offering a novel and efficient solution for complex traffic environments.