Singapore

The continuous advancements in life science technology have enabled spatial transcriptome technology to achieve an impressive level of resolution at the single-cell level. This technology has emerged as a crucial method for studying the cellular composition and differentiation states of tissues, investigating cell-cell interactions, and unraveling the molecular mechanisms underlying diseases and developmental processes. A key component in this analysis is the accurate segmentation of cells. However, existing segmentation methods often fail to fully leverage the valuable information provided by spatial transcriptomics, leading to inaccurate cell segmentation. In this study, we introduce SSL-CST, a cell segmentation for single-cell spatial transcriptome method based on self-supervised learning. SSL-CST employs a pre-trained model for foundational contour segmentation. Following the denoising process, it utilizes a self-supervised neural network to correct the cell boundaries to obtain accurate cell boundaries. Through this approach, SSL-CST outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in various tests conducted on multiple datasets. The improved segmentation provided by SSL-CST further enhances the analysis of single-cell spatial expression, providing effective tools for biological discovery.

AAAI 2026

SSL-CST: Cell Segmentation for Single-Cell Spatial Transcriptome Based on Self-Supervised Learning

spatial transcriptome; cell segmentation; self-supervised learning

We are pleased to announce the Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26), which will be held in Singapore EXPO from January 20 to January 27, 2026.

The purpose of the AAAI conference series is to promote research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foster scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners, scientists, students, and engineers across the entirety of AI and its affiliated disciplines. AAAI-26 will feature technical paper presentations, special tracks, invited speakers, workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, senior member presentations, competitions, and exhibit programs, and a range of other activities to be announced.<br><br>

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We are pleased to announce the Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26), which will be held in Singapore EXPO from January 20 to January 27, 2026.

technical paper

Optimizing patent claims is a critical yet challenging task, demanding careful balance between maximizing novelty and preserving legal scope. Manual claim drafting is labor-intensive, costly, and inherently inconsistent, while conventional Large Language Models (LLMs) often lack the structured, iterative reasoning essential for precise claim refinement. To address these challenges, we introduce Tree of Claims (ToC), an innovative framework that redefines claim editing as a guided search problem. ToC synergistically integrates Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) with a collaborative multi-agent system, comprising an LLM-based EditorAgent that proposes contextually grounded edits, and an ExaminerAgent that mimics patent examiner critiques through structured, chain-of-thought analyses of novelty and prior art disclosure. Driven by a carefully designed multi-objective reward function, ToC jointly optimizes novelty, scope retention, and semantic coherence. Experimental evaluation on a benchmark of 1145 claims demonstrates that ToC significantly outperforms standard LLMs in zero-shot and few-shot scenarios, achieving an average composite score improvement of 8%, and up to 9% in certain cases. Extensive experiments, including detailed ablation studies, validate ToC’s efficacy in generating superior, legally robust claim revisions. Overall, ToC establishes a transparent, controllable, and interpretable methodology that effectively bridges advanced LLM reasoning capabilities with strategic MCTS planning for structured patent claim optimization.

ToC: Tree-of-Claims Search with Multi-Agent Language Models

Anti-money laundering (AML) detection is of vital importance in financial risk control. Although Graph Neural Networks (GNN) have yielded promising results, existing motif-based approaches primarily focus on node anomaly detection on simple graphs, which hinders the direct identification of anomalous edges in directed temporal transaction networks. Moreover, consecutive transaction relationships, termed dual-edge motifs, have rarely been considered in previous AML studies. To address these gaps, we propose the D-EMAML framework, which consists of: (1) Fast-Motif-Gen, a GPU-accelerated dual-edge motif graph generator with pruning; (2) D-EMGNN, an attention-enhanced heterogeneous GNN module that reduces motif-type information redundancy; (3) MELP, a label aggregation scheme projecting predictions from the motif graph to the original graph. Extensive experiments on real-world and synthetic datasets demonstrate significant improvements over representative baselines and validate the contribution of each component. To our knowledge, this is the first application of dual-edge motif graphs for GNN-based edge anomaly detection in AML.

Beyond Single Transactions: D-EMAML---Dual-Edge Motif Neural Networks for Enhanced Anti-Money Laundering Detection

This paper presents a novel method, called Deformable
Polygonal Flow Matching (DPFM), for the generation of
polygonal arrangements such as jigsaw puzzles and floor
plans. DPFM is a Flow Matching framework that enables
the generation process to deform, rotate, and translate poly-
gons while decoupling these transformation, allowing to tog-
gle them individually. Able to combine the spatial reason-
ing capabilities of arrangement models with the flexibility
of position-based models, it covers a wide range of appli-
cations within a unified formulation, from noiseless puzzle
solving using rigid alignments to unconstrained floor plans
generation. We represent data using a hierarchical graph com-
posed of a topological subgraph encoding connectivity infor-
mation and semantics (such as room types for floor plans),
and a geometrical subgraph encoding the 1D polygonal loop
of each shape. DPFM also leverages Flow Matching’s arbi-
trary prior distributions for geometric constraints by design-
ing priors with domain knowledge. Rather than starting the
generation process from uninformed distributions, the gener-
ation is constrained through the informed priors since the ini-
tialization stage. The qualitative and quantitative evaluations
of our method, ran on the RPLAN and jigsaw puzzle datasets,
demonstrate strong performance. DPFM outperforms task-
specific methods, becoming the new state-of-the-art for 2D
arrangement generation. As our results show, DPFM is able to
solve novel tasks such as puzzle denoising, where pieces are
reconstructed from noisy versions and arranged into a valid
puzzle in parallel.

Deformable Polygonal Flow Matching with Informed Priors and Hierarchical Graph Constraints

Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is a critical tool for identifying molecular structures. By efficiently separating molecular fragments based on their mass-to-charge (m/z) ratios, it facilitates molecular generation and subsequent scientific discoveries. However, de novo molecular generation from MS/MS spectra remains fundamentally constrained by two paramount challenges: the vast chemical space requires effective structural constraints, and the absence of fine-grained substructural generation weakens the correspondences between spectral features and molecular structures. In this work, we propose MSAnchor, a novel two-stage framework for MS/MS-based molecular structure generation. We mitigate the search space challenge through the introduction of Anchor-Extended Molecular Scaffold (AEMS) representation that explicitly encodes side-chain anchoring points, thereby dramatically reducing combinatorial complexity. Leveraging the explicit attachment sites provided by AEMS, we develop anchor-specific priors that establish effective alignments between spectral features and molecular substructures. This fine-grained substructural correspondence is further enhanced by a modified Conditional Information Bottleneck (CIB) module that extracts the most informative spectral components in a structure-aware manner. These innovations enable MSAnchor to generate molecular structures that closely reflect spectral characteristics while constraining combinatorial complexity. Extensive experiments on the CANOPUS and MassSpecGym datasets demonstrate that MSAnchor achieves state-of-the-art performance in molecular structure prediction from MS/MS spectra, with performance improvements that are particularly more pronounced for molecules with higher complexity.

MSAnchor: De Novo Molecular Generation from Mass Spectrometry Data with Anchor-Extended Molecular Scaffolds

Biological intelligence has driven significant progress in
artificial intelligence (AI), but a critical gap remains:
biological systems inherit innate abilities from genes,
with brains initialized by blueprints refined over 3.5
billion years of evolution, while machines rely heavily on
inefficient, data-driven learning from scratch. This gap
arises from the lack of a genetic mechanism in machines to
transfer and accumulate inheritable knowledge across
generations. To bridge this gap, we propose learngenes,
network fragments that act as inheritable “genes” for
machines. Unlike conventional knowledge transfer methods,
learngenes enable efficient and universal knowledge
transfer by selectively encapsulating task-agnostic
knowledge. To facilitate the transfer and accumulation of
task-agnostic knowledge across generations, we introduce
Genetic Reinforcement Learning (GRL), a framework that
simulates the learning and evolution of organisms in
intelligent agents following Lamarckian principles. Through
GRL, we identify learngenes as network fragments within
agents' policy networks, equipping newborn agents with
innate abilities for rapid adaptation to novel tasks. We
demonstrate the advantages of learngene-based knowledge
transfer over evolution-based search and traditional
pre-trained models, and show how learngenes evolve through
the accumulation of task-agnostic knowledge. Overall, this
work establishes a novel paradigm for knowledge transfer
and model initialization in AI, offering new possibilities
for more adaptive, efficient, and scalable learning systems.

Learngene: Inheritable “Genes” in Intelligent Agents

The reliable deployment of reinforcement learning (RL) for real-world algorithmic trading is critically hindered by the ``simulation-to-reality gap.'' Standard industry backtesting on static historical data ignores market impact—the feedback loop where an agent's trades influence price dynamics—leading to strategies that are fragile and untrustworthy in live markets. To solve this significant problem, we present a novel and emerging application of AI: a framework for building an interactive, responsive market simulator. Our system first uses imitation learning (IL) to automatically train an ensemble of agents, each learning a distinct trading strategy from a different historical market regime (e.g., bull, bear). This creates a data-driven proxy for a diverse population of real-world traders. We then deploy an innovative Action Synthesis Network to synthesize the actions of this ensemble, generating a realistic, synthetic price trajectory that endogenously models the market's reaction to trades. This interactive environment is then used to train a final RL policy. We evaluate our system on NASDAQ-100 (QQQ) data, and the results demonstrate strong potential for deployment. The RL policy trained in our responsive simulator achieves significantly more robust performance, exhibiting superior downside protection during market downturns compared to various traditional baselines. This application provides a scalable and technically sound methodology for building more realistic training environments, presenting a clear path toward the development and eventual deployment of more resilient and effective algorithmic trading strategies.

An Interactive Simulation Framework by Ensemble Imitation Learning Agents for Training Robust Trading Policies

We study a path planning problem where the possible move actions are represented as a finite set of motion primitives aligned with the grid representation of the environment. That is, each primitive corresponds to a short kinodynamically-feasible motion of an agent and is represented as a sequence of the swept cells of a grid. Typically, heuristic search, i.e. A*, is conducted over the lattice induced by these primitives (lattice-based planning) to find a path. However, due to the large branching factor, such search may be inefficient in practice. To this end, we suggest a novel technique rooted in the idea of searching over the grid cells (as in vanilla A*) simultaneously fitting the possible sequences of the motion primitives into these cells. The resultant algorithm, MeshA*, provably preserves the guarantees on completeness and optimality, on the one hand, and is shown to notably outperform conventional lattice-based planning (x1.5-x2 decrease in the runtime), on the other hand.

MeshA*: Efficient Path Planning with Motion Primitives

We explore the oscillatory behavior observed in inversion methods applied to large-scale flow models, including text-to-image and text-to-video. By employing an augmented fixed-point-inspired iterative approach to invert real-world images, we observe that the solution does not achieve convergence, instead oscillating between distinct clusters. Through both experiments on synthetic data, text-to-image and text-to-video, we demonstrate that these oscillating clusters exhibit notable semantic coherence. We offer theoretical insights, showing that this behavior arises from oscillatory dynamics in flow models. Building on this understanding, we introduce a simple and fast distribution transfer technique that facilitates training-free image and video editing/enhancement. Furthermore, we provide quantitative results demonstrating the effectiveness of our method on tasks such as image enhancement, editing, and reconstruction. Notably, our approach enables the transformation of image-only enhancers and editors into lightweight, video-capable tools—without additional training—highlighting its practical versatility and impact.

Oscillation Inversion: Training-Free Image and Video Enhancement Through Oscillated Latents in Large Flow Models

We study stochastic planning problems in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with goals specified in Linear Temporal Logic (LTL). The state-of-the-art approach transforms LTL formulas into good-for-MDP (GFM) automata, which feature a restricted form of nondeterminism. These automata are then composed with the MDP, allowing the agent to resolve the nondeterminism during policy synthesis.
A major factor affecting the scalability of this approach is the size of the generated automata. In this paper, we propose a novel GFM state-space reduction technique that significantly reduces the number of automata states. Our method employs a sophisticated chain of transformations, leveraging recent advances in good-for-games minimisation developed for adversarial settings.
In addition to our theoretical contributions, we present empirical results demonstrating the practical effectiveness of our state-reduction technique.
Furthermore, we introduce a direct construction method for formulas of the form $\textsf{G} \textsf{F}\varphi$, where $\varphi$ is a co-safety formula. This construction is provably single-exponential in the worst case, in contrast to the general doubly-exponential complexity. Our experiments confirm the scalability advantages of this specialised construction.

Good-for-MDP State Reduction for Stochastic LTL Planning

In runtime verification, monitoring consists of analyzing the current execution of a system and determining, on the basis of the observed finite trace, whether all its possible continuations satisfy or violate a given specification. This is typically done by synthesizing a monitor—often a Deterministic Finite State Automaton (DFA)—from logical specifications expressed in Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) or in its finite-word
variant (LTLf). Unfortunately, the size of the resulting DFA may incur a doubly exponential blow-up.
In this paper, we identify some conditions under which monitoring can be done without constructing such a DFA. We build on the notion of intentionally safe and cosafe formulas, introduced in [Kupferman & Vardi, FMSD, 2001], to show that monitoring of these formulas can be carried out through trace-checking, that is, by directly evaluating them on the current system trace, with a polynomial complexity in the size of both the trace and the formula.
In addition, we investigate the complexity of recognizing intentionally safe and cosafe formulas for the safety and cosafety fragments of LTL and LTLf. As for LTLf, we show that all formulas in these fragments are intentionally safe and cosafe, thus removing the need for the check. As for LTL, we prove that the problem is in PSPACE, significantly improving over the EXPSPACE complexity of full LTL.

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ToC: Tree-of-Claims Search with Multi-Agent Language Models

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