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Browse the failure-mode index

157 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Engineering. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering

Lung Nodule Classification Using Biomarkers, Volumetric Radiomics and 3D CNNs

Kushal Mehta, Arshita Jain, Jayalakshmi Mangalagiri et al. · 2020 · arXiv

We present a hybrid algorithm to estimate lung nodule malignancy that combines imaging biomarkers from Radiologist's annotation with image classification of CT scans. Our algorithm employs a 3D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) as well as a Random Forest in order to combine CT imagery with biomarker annotation and volumetric radiomic features. We analyze and compare the performance of the algorithm using only imagery, only biomarkers, combined imagery + biomarkers, combined imagery + volumetric radiomic features and finally the combination of imagery + biomarkers + volumetric features in orde

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering

Learning-based Axial Video Motion Magnification

Kwon Byung-Ki, Oh Hyun-Bin, Kim Jun-Seong et al. · 2023 · arXiv

Video motion magnification amplifies invisible small motions to be perceptible, which provides humans with a spatially dense and holistic understanding of small motions in the scene of interest. This is based on the premise that magnifying small motions enhances the legibility of motions. In the real world, however, vibrating objects often possess convoluted systems that have complex natural frequencies, modes, and directions. Existing motion magnification often fails to improve legibility since the intricate motions still retain complex characteristics even after being magnified, which may di

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering

A Unified Approach to Enforce Non-Negativity Constraint in Neural Network Approximation for Optimal Voltage Regulation

Jiaqi Wu, Jingyi Yuan, Yang Weng et al. · 2025 · arXiv

Power system voltage regulation is crucial to maintain power quality while integrating intermittent renewable resources in distribution grids. However, the system model on the grid edge is often unknown, making it difficult to model physical equations for optimal control. Therefore, previous work proposes structured data-driven methods like input convex neural networks (ICNN) for "optimal" control without relying on a physical model. While ICNNs offer theoretical guarantees based on restrictive assumptions of non-negative neural network parameters, can one improve the approximation power with

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering

On The Synergy Between Nonconvex Extensions of The Tensor Nuclear Norm for Tensor Recovery

Kaito Hosono, Shunsuke Ono, Takamichi Miyata · 2020 · arXiv

Low-rank tensor recovery has attracted much attention among various tensor recovery approaches. A tensor rank has several definitions, unlike the matrix rank--e.g. the CP rank and the Tucker rank. Many low-rank tensor recovery methods are focused on the Tucker rank. Since the Tucker rank is nonconvex and discontinuous, many relaxations of the Tucker rank have been proposed, e.g., the tensor nuclear norm, weighted tensor nuclear norm, and weighted tensor Schatten-$p$ norm. In particular, the weighted tensor Schatten-p norm has two parameters, the weight and $p$, and the tensor nuclear norm and

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering

Audio-Conditioned Diffusion LLMs for ASR and Deliberation Processing

Mengqi Wang, Zhan Liu, Zengrui Jin et al. · 2025 · arXiv

Diffusion-based large language models (DLLMs) have recently attracted growing interest as an alternative to autoregressive decoders. In this work, we present an empirical study on using the diffusion-based large language model LLaDA for automatic speech recognition (ASR). We first investigate its use as an external deliberation-based processing module for Whisper-LLaMA transcripts. By leveraging the bidirectional attention and denoising capabilities of LLaDA, we explore random masking, low-confidence masking, and semi-autoregressive strategies, showing that Whisper-LLaDA substantially reduces

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering

Failing Forward: Improving Generative Error Correction for ASR with Synthetic Data and Retrieval Augmentation

Sreyan Ghosh, Mohammad Sadegh Rasooli, Michael Levit et al. · 2024 · arXiv

Generative Error Correction (GEC) has emerged as a powerful post-processing method to enhance the performance of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems. However, we show that GEC models struggle to generalize beyond the specific types of errors encountered during training, limiting their ability to correct new, unseen errors at test time, particularly in out-of-domain (OOD) scenarios. This phenomenon amplifies with named entities (NEs), where, in addition to insufficient contextual information or knowledge about the NEs, novel NEs keep emerging. To address these issues, we propose DARAG (D

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering

Neuro-MoBRE: Exploring Multi-subject Multi-task Intracranial Decoding via Explicit Heterogeneity Resolving

Di Wu, Yifei Jia, Siyuan Li et al. · 2025 · arXiv

Neurophysiological decoding, fundamental to advancing brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies, has significantly benefited from recent advances in deep learning. However, existing decoding approaches largely remain constrained to single-task scenarios and individual subjects, limiting their broader applicability and generalizability. Efforts towards creating large-scale neurophysiological foundation models have shown promise, but continue to struggle with significant challenges due to pervasive data heterogeneity across subjects and decoding tasks. Simply increasing model parameters and da

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