arXiv:2511.08215v1 Announce Type: cross 
Abstract: The proliferation of digital food applications necessitates robust methods for automated nutritional analysis and culinary guidance. This paper presents a comprehensive comparative evaluation of a decoupled, multimodal pipeline for food recognition. We evaluate a system integrating a specialized visual backbone (EfficientNet-B4) with a powerful generative large language model (Google's Gemini LLM). The core objective is to evaluate the trade-offs between visual classification accuracy, model efficiency, and the quality of generative output (nutritional data and recipes). We benchmark this pipeline against alternative vision backbones (VGG-16, ResNet-50, YOLOv8) and a lightweight LLM (Gemma). We introduce a formalization for "Semantic Error Propagation" (SEP) to analyze how classification inaccuracies from the visual module cascade into the generative output. Our analysis is grounded in a new Custom Chinese Food Dataset (CCFD) developed to address cultural bias in public datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that while EfficientNet-B4 (89.0\% Top-1 Acc.) provides the best balance of accuracy and efficiency, and Gemini (9.2/10 Factual Accuracy) provides superior generative quality, the system's overall utility is fundamentally bottlenecked by the visual front-end's perceptive accuracy. We conduct a detailed per-class analysis, identifying high semantic similarity as the most critical failure mode.

تقيّم دراسة جديدة نظامًا متعدد الوسائط يجمع بين EfficientNet-B4 و Gemini LLM من Google لتحليل الصور الغذائية وتوليد الوصفات. تبرز الدراسة أهمية دقة التصنيف البصري في إنتاج بيانات غذائية موثوقة، باستخدام مجموعة بيانات مخصصة للأطعمة الصينية للتخفيف من التحيزات الثقافية. حقق EfficientNet-B4 دقة بنسبة 89%، بينما حصل Gemini على 9.2/10 في جودة التوليد، مما يبرز إمكانيات الذكاء الاصطناعي في تحسين التطبيقات الغذائية.

Un nuevo estudio evalúa un pipeline multimodal que combina EfficientNet-B4 y el LLM Gemini de Google para el reconocimiento de imágenes de alimentos y la generación de recetas. La investigación destaca la importancia de la precisión en la clasificación visual para generar datos nutricionales fiables, utilizando un conjunto de datos de alimentos chinos personalizado para mitigar sesgos culturales. EfficientNet-B4 alcanzó una precisión del 89%, mientras que Gemini obtuvo 9.2/10 en calidad generativa, subrayando el potencial de la IA en aplicaciones relacionadas con la alimentación.

Une nouvelle étude évalue un pipeline multimodal combinant EfficientNet-B4 et le LLM Gemini de Google pour la reconnaissance d'images alimentaires et la génération de recettes. La recherche souligne l'importance de l'exactitude de la classification visuelle pour générer des données nutritionnelles fiables, en utilisant un ensemble de données alimentaires chinoises personnalisé pour atténuer les biais culturels. EfficientNet-B4 a atteint 89 % de précision, tandis que Gemini a obtenu 9,2/10 en qualité générative, soulignant le potentiel de l'IA dans l'amélioration des applications alimentaires.

A new study evaluates a multimodal pipeline combining EfficientNet-B4 and Google's Gemini LLM for food image recognition and recipe generation. The research highlights the importance of visual classification accuracy in generating reliable nutritional data, using a Custom Chinese Food Dataset to mitigate cultural biases. EfficientNet-B4 achieved 89% accuracy, while Gemini scored 9.2/10 in generative quality, underscoring the potential of AI in enhancing food-related applications.

Evaluating Gemini LLM in Food Image-Based Recipe and Nutrition Description with EfficientNet-B4 Visual Backbone

arXiv:1906.07172v5 Announce Type: replace-cross 
Abstract: Equivariant neural networks are a class of neural networks designed to preserve symmetries inherent in the data. In this paper, we introduce a general method for modifying a neural network to enforce equivariance, a process we refer to as equivarification. We further show that group convolutional neural networks (G-CNNs) arise as a special case of our framework.

Equivariant neural networks and equivarification

arXiv:2311.13745v4 Announce Type: replace-cross 
Abstract: Diffusion models have become the most popular approach to deep generative modeling of images, largely due to their empirical performance and reliability. From a theoretical standpoint, a number of recent works have studied the iteration complexity of sampling, assuming access to an accurate diffusion model. In this work, we focus on understanding the sample complexity of training such a model; how many samples are needed to learn an accurate diffusion model using a sufficiently expressive neural network? Prior work showed bounds polynomial in the dimension, desired Total Variation error, and Wasserstein error. We show an exponential improvement in the dependence on Wasserstein error and depth, along with improved dependencies on other relevant parameters.

Improved Sample Complexity Bounds for Diffusion Model Training

arXiv:2410.22995v2 Announce Type: replace-cross 
Abstract: A hallmark of advanced artificial intelligence is the capacity to progress from passive visual perception to the strategic modification of visual information to facilitate complex reasoning. This advanced capability, however, remains critically underdeveloped in current Large Multi-modal Models (LMMs). The deficiency is often masked by evaluation metrics that prioritize final-answer accuracy, creating an illusion of competence where genuine reasoning is absent. Using the domain of geometric problem-solving as a precise instrument, we probe this issue through tasks that require constructing visual aids. To this end, we introduce \textbf{VisAidMath}, a challenging benchmark, and our novel Three-Layered Funnel Evaluation Framework. This framework moves beyond simple accuracy (ACCU) to scrutinize the generation of valid visual aids (PVA) and the soundness of subsequent reasoning steps (SPRS). Our extensive experiments on state-of-the-art models, including Doubao-Seed-1.6 and o4, reveal a profound ``Reasoning Illusion''. We observe that high surface-level accuracy conceals a catastrophic failure in the models' ability to produce valid visual aids or to reason from them. Our findings expose a fundamental schism between visual perception and logical deduction in modern LMMs. We host an evaluation platform at CodaBench for testing publicly. Homepage: https://nlp2ct.github.io/VisAidMathHomepage/ Evaluation: https://www.codabench.org/competitions/7634/

VisAidMath: Benchmarking Visual-Aided Mathematical Reasoning

arXiv:2508.01249v3 Announce Type: replace-cross 
Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM) agents offer a powerful new paradigm for solving various problems by combining natural language reasoning with the execution of external tools. However, their dynamic and non-transparent behavior introduces critical security risks, particularly in the presence of prompt injection attacks. In this work, we propose a novel insight that treats the agent runtime traces as structured programs with analyzable semantics. Thus, we present AgentArmor, a program analysis framework that converts agent traces into graph intermediate representation-based structured program dependency representations (e.g., CFG, DFG, and PDG) and enforces security policies via a type system. AgentArmor consists of three key components: (1) a graph constructor that reconstructs the agent's runtime traces as graph-based intermediate representations with control and data flow described within; (2) a property registry that attaches security-relevant metadata of interacted tools \& data, and (3) a type system that performs static inference and checking over the intermediate representation. By representing agent behavior as structured programs, AgentArmor enables program analysis for sensitive data flow, trust boundaries, and policy violations. We evaluate AgentArmor on the AgentDojo benchmark, the results show that AgentArmor can reduce the ASR to 3\%, with the utility drop only 1\%.

AgentArmor: Enforcing Program Analysis on Agent Runtime Trace to Defend Against Prompt Injection

arXiv:2511.14691v1 Announce Type: cross 
Abstract: Attention is the brain's ability to selectively focus on a few specific aspects while ignoring irrelevant ones. This biological principle inspired the attention mechanism in modern Transformers. Transformers now underpin large language models (LLMs) such as GPT, but at the cost of massive training and inference energy, leading to a large carbon footprint. While brain attention emerges from neural circuits, Transformer attention relies on dot-product similarity to weight elements in the input sequence. Neuromorphic computing, especially spiking neural networks (SNNs), offers a brain-inspired path to energy-efficient intelligence. Despite recent work on attention-based spiking Transformers, the core attention layer remains non-neuromorphic. Current spiking attention (i) relies on dot-product or element-wise similarity suited to floating-point operations, not event-driven spikes; (ii) keeps attention matrices that suffer from the von Neumann bottleneck, limiting in-memory computing; and (iii) still diverges from brain-like computation. To address these issues, we propose the Spiking STDP Transformer (S$^{2}$TDPT), a neuromorphic Transformer that implements self-attention through spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP), embedding query--key correlations in synaptic weights. STDP, a core mechanism of memory and learning in the brain and widely studied in neuromorphic devices, naturally enables in-memory computing and supports non-von Neumann hardware. On CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100, our model achieves 94.35\% and 78.08\% accuracy with only four timesteps and 0.49 mJ on CIFAR-100, an 88.47\% energy reduction compared to a standard ANN Transformer. Grad-CAM shows that the model attends to semantically relevant regions, enhancing interpretability. Overall, S$^{2}$TDPT illustrates how biologically inspired attention can yield energy-efficient, hardware-friendly, and explainable neuromorphic models.

Attention via Synaptic Plasticity is All You Need: A Biologically Inspired Spiking Neuromorphic Transformer

arXiv:2511.08955v2 Announce Type: replace-cross 
Abstract: Simulating microstructure evolution (MicroEvo) is vital for materials design but demands high numerical accuracy, efficiency, and physical fidelity. Although recent studies on deep learning (DL) offer a promising alternative to traditional solvers, the field lacks standardized benchmarks. Existing studies are flawed due to a lack of comparing specialized MicroEvo DL models with state-of-the-art spatio-temporal architectures, an overemphasis on numerical accuracy over physical fidelity, and a failure to analyze error propagation over time. To address these gaps, we introduce MicroEvoEval, the first comprehensive benchmark for image-based microstructure evolution prediction. We evaluate 14 models, encompassing both domain-specific and general-purpose architectures, across four representative MicroEvo tasks with datasets specifically structured for both short- and long-term assessment. Our multi-faceted evaluation framework goes beyond numerical accuracy and computational cost, incorporating a curated set of structure-preserving metrics to assess physical fidelity. Our extensive evaluations yield several key insights. Notably, we find that modern architectures (e.g., VMamba), not only achieve superior long-term stability and physical fidelity but also operate with an order-of-magnitude greater computational efficiency. The results highlight the necessity of holistic evaluation and identify these modern architectures as a highly promising direction for developing efficient and reliable surrogate models in data-driven materials science.

Evaluating Gemini LLM in Food Image-Based Recipe and Nutrition Description with EfficientNet-B4 Visual Backbone

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