Real-world backdoor attacks often require poisoned datasets to be stored and transmitted before they are used to compromise deep learning systems. In the era of big data, however, the inevitable use of lossy compression poses a fundamental challenge to invisible backdoor attacks. We observe that triggers embedded in RGB images can become ineffective once the images are lossily compressed into binary bitstreams, such as JPEG files, for storage and transmission. Consequently, poisoned data may lose their malicious functionality after compression, causing backdoor injection to fail. Prior compression-based attacks typically exploit compression artifacts as certain triggers to distinguish poisoned RGB samples from uncompressed benign ones, rather than addressing whether malicious information can survive a shared lossy storage-and-transmission pipeline. In this paper, we highlight the necessity of explicitly accounting for lossy compression in backdoor attacks. This requires attackers to ensure that transmitted binary bitstreams preserve malicious trigger information, such that effective triggers can be induced after decompression. Building on the region-of-interest (ROI) coding mechanism in image compression, we propose two poisoning strategies tailored to inevitable lossy compression. First, we introduce Universal Attack Reactivation, a general method that uses sample-specific ROI masks to reactivate trigger information in bitstreams for learned image compression (LIC). Second, we present Compression-Adapted Attack, a new attack strategy that employs customized ROI masks to encode trigger information into bitstreams and applies to both traditional codecs and LIC. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of both strategies.
High-fidelity photovoltaic (PV) module mapping requires complete instance recovery and accurate delineation. Vision foundation models offer zero-shot segmentation, but converting incomplete and inconsistent predictions across views into a complete, geometrically accurate map of individual modules remains challenging. We propose the Multi-View PV Module Mapper (MV-PVMapper), a training-free framework coupling vision foundation models with unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry. First, Segment Anything Model 3 (SAM 3) generates candidates from original images using text prompts. Their contours are then transferred into object space through per-module slope correction to limit distortion from surface-model noise, and verified against representative module dimensions to guide cross-view instance selection. Finally, accepted instances return to all covering images as box prompts for SAM~3, supplementing text prompts with spatial cues for iterative segmentation, verification and fusion. On five-direction surveys of three operational rooftop PV plants at approximately 1 cm nadir ground sampling distance, two feedback iterations recover 7,710 of 7,711 reference modules with no false positives at an intersection-over-union (IoU) matching threshold of 0.5. Macro-averaged area precision and recall reach 99.00 % and 98.52 %, respectively. Averaged across sites, the aggregated Jaccard index reaches 97.55 %, compared with 60.73 % and 41.24 % for orthomosaic segmentation and multi-view pixel-voting baselines, respectively; average precision at the stricter IoU threshold of 0.95 reaches 95.67 %. Ablation studies show that module-size constraints are critical for instance separation, while slope correction and feedback to all covering views improve boundary accuracy. These results are achieved without task-specific image annotation or segmentation-model weight updates.
Soil hydraulic functions underpin water flow and transport modeling in the vadose zone, yet they are commonly represented by expert-designed formulations such as the Mualem-van Genuchten (MvG) model. Because these formulations rest on predefined functional assumptions, balancing predictive accuracy and parametric compactness across soil textures remains challenging. Here we introduce a graph-based equation discovery framework that distills soil hydraulic functions from experimental data. Reapplied to the original datasets that motivated the MvG parameterization, the framework recovers a concise water retention function together with an analytical unsaturated hydraulic conductivity expression whose mathematical structure departs from classical empirical forms. Evaluated across soils of contrasting texture, the discovered model predicts unsaturated hydraulic conductivity more accurately than MvG and its common variants, while its fitted parameters retain interpretable correlations with measurable soil physical properties. These findings suggest that data-driven discovery can yield compact, analytically tractable constitutive relations that move beyond fixed empirical formulations.
Symbolic regression (SR) aims to discover interpretable mathematical expressions from data and plays a key role in scientific discovery. However, existing methods face a common bottleneck: the enormous search space and severe combinatorial explosion make it difficult to achieve a favorable trade-off between accuracy and algorithmic efficiency. We argue that, in addition to designing increasingly complex solver-specific SR strategies, an equally promising direction is to equip them with a shareable auxiliary strategy that can provide reliable search guidance. To this end, we propose DASS, a solver-adaptable Dynamic Auxiliary Search Strategy that improves SR by constructing and refining a high-potential auxiliary search subspace. DASS represents the auxiliary search space as a functional subspace spanned by a set of high-potential basis function terms. It estimates term utility through multi-environment evaluation, filters unstable guidance, and updates term potential scores with a Gibbs posterior, thereby calibrating the subspace to provide more reliable guidance for downstream solvers. The high-quality solutions produced by the solver are used to update the set of basis terms. This forms a virtuous closed-loop optimization process: the subspace guides the downstream solver, and the solver feedback reshapes the subspace for subsequent exploration. DASS can be easily integrated with various types of SR solvers. Extensive experiments on LLM-SRBench show that DASS significantly improves the accuracy of original solvers with a manageable increase in runtime.
Symbolic regression (SR) seeks explicit equations that explain observed data, and recent methods increasingly employ large language models (LLMs) and agents for equation discovery. However, these systems typically rely on manually designed workflows and prompts. We argue that the SR agent harness should itself be an optimization target: its design shapes search priors and how numerical feedback guides subsequent equation refinement. We therefore propose HarnessSR, a framework for jointly optimizing prompts and workflows to construct reusable SR agents. During both harness optimization and agent execution, HarnessSR supports either PySR or an LLM-based equation generator through tool-specific interfaces, allowing the framework to optimize search guidance for different equation-discovery mechanisms. HarnessSR first optimizes role prompts through equation-discovery feedback in basic workflows, then jointly searches prompt assignments and workflows with brief adaptation to align the two. Finally, it refines role instructions through reflection on residual patterns, candidate equation structures, and search outcomes, improving how these signals guide subsequent equation search. On LSR-Synth in LLM-SRBench, HarnessSR achieves a mean ID $\mathrm{Acc}_{0.01}$ of 61.33% across three backbones, a 45.0% relative improvement over the next-best baseline.
Most symbolic regression methods optimize candidate equations, but improving an equation's fit does not establish whether its underlying scientific conjecture should be retained, revised, or rejected. A conjecture may admit multiple mathematical realizations, and similarly accurate equations may imply different explanations. This motivates a shift from refining individual expressions to developing and testing the conjectures that guide them. We introduce SCOPE, a framework that sustains multiple conjecture-driven research trajectories. Multiple scientist agents independently pursue conjectures through equation modeling, question formulation, and active experimentation, then exchange evidence to revise their conjectures and research directions. Their findings are consolidated into a scientific report linking models, conclusions, and evidence. Existing equation-discovery benchmarks primarily assess recovered expressions, leaving the evidence and scientific conclusions established through the investigation underexamined. We therefore introduce ClosureBench, an interactive benchmark of 60 closure-discovery tasks across five scientific domains. ClosureBench focuses on closure-discovery tasks to give equation discovery a concrete scientific purpose. Each task embeds an unknown algebraic relation in a known PDE system, where agents control experimental conditions in OpenFOAM to acquire new data for equation discovery. Beyond equation accuracy, ClosureBench proposes three metrics to evaluate the discovery process: evidence faithfulness, mechanism insight, and experimental effectiveness. Compared with diverse baselines, SCOPE achieves higher equation accuracy on both ClosureBench and a real-world scientific discovery case, while producing more accurate, reliable, and effective scientific discoveries.