Academic Intelligence · Curated Daily

Explore the Frontier of Global Academia

AcademicHub aggregates real-time literature from top journals and preprint platforms. Build your personal research radar and let large language models compile cross-disciplinary analysis briefings automatically.

01.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

As You Wish: Mission Planning with Formal Verification using LLMs in Precision Agriculture

arXiv:2606.18519v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Though robotic systems are now being commercialized and deployed in various industries, many of these systems are highly specialized and often require an advanced skill set to operate and ensure they perform as instructed. To mitigate this problem, we recently introduced a mission planner leveraging LLMs to synthesize mission plans in precision agriculture based on mission descriptions provided in natural language. While the system demonstrates impressive performance, it also suffers from the inherent ambiguities of natural language. In this paper, we extend our system to address this issue by introducing multiple feedback loops in the planning architecture that leverage linear temporal logic (LTL) to ensure the mission planning system meets the specifications formulated by the user while still using natural language. To mitigate potential bias, this is achieved by using two different commercial LLMs in charge of the specification and verification subtasks. Through extensive experiments, we highlight the strengths and limitations of integrating mission verification into a fully autonomous pipeline, particularly regarding an LLM's ability to generate valuable LTL formulas, and show how our proposed implementation addresses and solves these challenges.

02.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

CLAP: Contrastive Latent Action Pretraining for Learning Vision-Language-Action Models from Human Videos

Generalist Vision-Language-Action models remain constrained by the scarcity of robotic data relative to the abundance of human video demonstrations. Existing Latent Action Models attempt to use video data but often suffer from visual entanglement, encoding noise rather than manipulation skills. To address this limitation, we propose Contrastive Latent Action Pretraining (CLAP), a framework that first uses Act-VAE to learn an executable action-token vocabulary from robot trajectories and then aligns human visual transitions with this vocabulary through contrastive learning. This alignment maps unlabeled human videos into a physically grounded latent action space rather than reconstructing appearance. Building on the aligned tokens, we train CLAP-NTP as an autoregressive VLA using robot demonstrations and pseudo-labeled human videos, preserving instruction following and object generalization. For deployment and target-domain adaptation, we further introduce a post-training strategy that combines CLAP-RF, a Rectified Flow action head for low-latency continuous action chunk prediction, with Knowledge Matching regularization to preserve pretrained semantic knowledge during fine-tuning. Extensive experiments show that CLAP achieves strong performance against competitive baselines while enabling effective skill transfer from human videos to robotic execution.

03.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

SPDA-SAM: A Self-prompted Depth-Aware Segment Anything Model for Instance Segmentation

Recently, Segment Anything Model (SAM) has demonstrated strong generalizability in various instance segmentation tasks. However, its performance is severely dependent on the quality of manual prompts. In addition, the RGB images that instance segmentation methods normally use inherently lack depth information. As a result, the ability of these methods to perceive spatial structures and delineate object boundaries is hindered. To address these challenges, we propose a Self-prompted Depth-Aware SAM (SPDA-SAM) for instance segmentation. Specifically, we design a Semantic-Spatial Self-prompt Module (SSSPM) which extracts the semantic and spatial prompts from the image encoder and the mask decoder of SAM, respectively. Furthermore, we introduce a Coarse-to-Fine RGB-D Fusion Module (C2FFM), in which the features extracted from a monocular RGB image and the depth map estimated from it are fused. In particular, the structural information in the depth map is used to provide coarse-grained guidance to feature fusion, while local variations in depth are encoded in order to fuse fine-grained feature representations. To our knowledge, SAM has not been explored in such self-prompted and depth-aware manners. Experimental results demonstrate that our SPDA-SAM outperforms its state-of-the-art counterparts across twelve different data sets. These promising results should be due to the guidance of the self-prompts and the compensation for the spatial information loss by the coarse-to-fine RGB-D fusion operation.

04.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

CDH13 is associated with cellular viability after exposure to ionizing radiation using genome-wide screening

Background: It is well known that genetic variants contribute to cellular sensitivity to chemotherapeutic agents and ionizing radiation (IR). The aim of this study was to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and genes associated with the spectrum of normal cellular sensitivity of lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) towards ionizing radiation and mitomycin C (MMC). Methods: In a first step, we determined the viability of LCLs established from male participants of the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) aged >=62 years following treatments with increasing doses of IR (n=137 cell lines) or MMC (n=140 cell lines) using the alamarBlue assay. Results from intra-experimental triplicates and three independent experiments for each cell line and treatment were used to calculate the area under the curves (AUCs) representing the specific sensitivity to IR and MMC of each LCL. The data from these experiments were subsequently used as outcomes in genome-wide association studies (GWASs). In addition, we calculated polygenic risk scores (PGS) from UK Biobank GWAS results for four cancer-related phenotypes and assessed the extent to which the variance in the IR and MMC sensitivity is explained by these PGS. Results: The GWAS analyses revealed one variant, rs74728080, located in CDH13 on chromosome 16, to show genome-wide significant (p < 5 x 10-8, beta = 2.81) association with cellular viability after treatment with IR. In the GWAS on MMC sensitivity the most interesting signal was elicited by SNP rs113978558 in an intron of the PLD5 gene on chromosome 1 (p = 9.232 x 10-8; beta = 1.44). Several other SNPs with statistically suggestive (i.e., p < 1 x 10-5) evidence of association with IR or MMC sensitivity were identified. PGSs calculations from GWAS of four cancer-related traits in UKB explained ~5% and ~3% of phenotypic variance in IR- and MMC-induced cell viability, respectively. Conclusion: The genome-wide significant association of rs74728080 with IR sensitivity and the location of this variant in CDH13 is interesting and functionally highly plausible given its known involvement in oxidative-stress response and function as tumor suppressor. Taken together, our novel data suggest that CDH13 may be genuinely involved in regulating cellular IR sensitivity.

05.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-16

Mathematicians are developing rules for AI use — other fields should follow

Authors: Unknown Author

The mathematics community is right to call for transparency, integrity and fairness to be protected when AI tools are used. Researchers in other disciplines could learn from this approach. The mathematics community is right to call for transparency, integrity and fairness to be protected when AI tools are used. Researchers in other disciplines could learn from this approach.

06.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

Time-multiplexed layer reuse for physical neural networks

arXiv:2511.00044v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Physical neural networks (PNNs) are promising candidates for next-generation computing, but existing demonstrations remain several orders of magnitude smaller than modern digital neural networks, whose recent advances have been driven by rapid growth in trainable parameters. This situation resembles the constraints of early digital neural networks, which led to ideas around parameter reuse. We investigate what similarly efficient hardware architectures may look like, focusing specifically on the common bottleneck of slow re-adjustment of the weights in PNNs. We propose the Time-Indexed Deep Alternating Layers Network (TIDAL-Net), which occupies an intermediate regime between recurrent and deep neural networks, specifically aimed at the scales and restrictions of common PNN prototypes. TIDAL-Net leverages the timescale separation found in many PNNs between fast forward dynamics and slowly trainable weights and biases, using layer-by-layer time multiplexing to increase effective depth while limiting implementation cost. Numerical experiments on image classification and natural language processing tasks show that TIDAL-Net improves performance with only minor modifications to conventional PNNs.

07.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-22

Cancer cells adopt unprecedented strategies to produce a molecule that protects them from iron-dependent death

The finding that spermine molecules in cells bind to iron to prevent it unleashing ferroptosis, a type of cell death, opens up strategies for treating tissue damage and cancer. The finding that spermine molecules in cells bind to iron to prevent it unleashing ferroptosis, a type of cell death, opens up strategies for treating tissue damage and cancer.

08.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Rotational Symmetry based Object Pose Estimation from Point Clouds in the Absence of Known 3D Models

Object pose estimation is crucial to many industrial applications, with one example being automated spray painting using a robot. However, confidentiality concerns often limit access to high-quality 3D models, posing a significant challenge for point-cloud-based pose estimation. In such scenarios, rotational symmetry, a readily accessible characteristic of many industrial objects, can provide valuable prior information to facilitate pose estimation.In this paper, we propose a method that leverages the rotational symmetry commonly found in industrial objects to address the challenge caused by the absence of 3D models. The object pose is jointly estimated with point cloud refinement through an iterative optimization process. This optimization relies on a rotational symmetry constraint loss. To construct this loss, each 3D point is rotated according to the currently estimated pose, and multiple correspondences are identified using nearest-neighbor search by exploiting the rotational symmetry property. These correspondences are then used to compute the rotational symmetry constraint loss, which iteratively refines both the pose and the point cloud.By explicitly incorporating rotational symmetry into the optimization process, the proposed method achieves robust pose estimation and generalizes well across diverse object types. The proposed method is evaluated on a dataset specifically created for point clouds without known 3D models, consisting of four categories of synthetic objects and one real wheel hub collected from a production line. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves performance comparable to methods that rely on known 3D models.

09.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Efficient Temporal Modeling for Mobile Sleep Staging via Lightweight Random Attention

arXiv:2606.13694v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Mobile sleep staging serves as a foundational infrastructure for in-home sleep monitoring and closed-loop modulation. But existing sequential models such as RNNs and Transformers are computationally expensive for mobile deployment. In this paper, we propose Random Attention (RA), a lightweight temporal modeling module based on fixed random projections, which replaces learnable sequence modeling with similarity-based aggregation. RA introduces little additional parameters beyond the epoch encoder while enabling effective temporal smoothing. We further provide a theoretical interpretation via the Random Attention Prior Kernel (RAPK), which decomposes RA into a global smoothing term and a feature similarity term, offering an interpretable view of temporal sleep structure. Experiments on Sleep-EDF-20 and Sleep-EDF-78 show that RA consistently improves epoch-wise baselines by 1-3\% in accuracy and F1 score, while achieving competitive performance compared with LSTM, GRU, and Transformer models. RA also demonstrates strong generalization across different backbone encoders and improved robustness over conventional temporal smoothing methods. These results indicate that efficient sleep staging can be achieved through lightweight similarity-based temporal aggregation, making RA suitable for real-time wearable applications.

10.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

Gaussian DP for Reporting Differential Privacy Guarantees in Machine Learning

arXiv:2503.10945v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Current practices for reporting differential privacy (DP) guarantees for machine learning (ML) algorithms such as DP-SGD provide an incomplete and potentially misleading picture. For instance, if only a single $(\varepsilon, \delta)$ is known about a mechanism, standard analyses show that there could exist highly accurate inference attacks against training data records, when, upon a more careful analysis, such accurate attacks do not exist for most practical mechanisms. In this position paper, we argue that using _non-asymptotic_ Gaussian Differential Privacy (GDP) as the primary means of communicating DP guarantees in ML avoids these potential downsides. Using two recent developments in the DP literature: (i) open-source numerical accountants capable of computing the privacy profile and $f$-DP curves of DP-SGD to arbitrary accuracy, and (ii) a decision-theoretic metric over DP representations, we show how to provide non-asymptotic bounds on GDP using numerical accountants, and show that GDP can capture the entire privacy profile of DP-SGD and related algorithms with virtually no error, as quantified by the metric. To support our claims, we investigate the privacy profiles of state-of-the-art DP large-scale image classification, and the TopDown algorithm for the U.S. Decennial Census, observing that GDP fits their profiles remarkably well in all cases. We conclude with a discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, and discuss which other privacy mechanisms could benefit from GDP.

11.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-12

Mixing times of one-sided $k$-transposition shuffles

arXiv:2112.05085v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study mixing times of the one-sided $k$-transposition shuffle. We prove that this shuffle mixes relatively slowly, even for $k$ big. Using the recent ``lifting eigenvectors'' technique of Dieker and Saliola and applying the $\ell^2$ bound, we prove different mixing behaviors and explore the occurrence of cutoff depending on $k$.

12.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Unified Multimodal Model for Brain MRI Imputation and Understanding

Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) hold great potential for medicine, as they inherit knowledge from LLM and allow multiple data modalities to be integrated, analysed and interpreted in natural language. However, the field of medical MLLMs is constrained by non-trivial challenges, notably the scarcity of high-quality training data and the frequent occurrence of missing data in the real-world clinical setting. Here, we propose a novel unified multimodal model, UniBrain, for brain magnetic resonance image (MRI) analysis. To address potential missing brain MRI modalities, we employ a unified training strategy to perform joint imaging modality imputation and brain image understanding. During training, an interleaved and description-enriched data flow is constructed to train the model in an autoregressive manner, enabling medical reasoning with generated multimodal data. A self-alignment strategy is introduced to leverage dense image embeddings to learn fine-grained anatomical features without requiring detailed image captions. Furthermore, we propose a dynamic hidden state mechanism to alleviate the exposure bias during long-context multimodal inference. Extensive experiments on multi-disease brain MRI dataset demonstrate that UniBrain achieves high performance for brain image imputation, understanding, and disease diagnosis under various extents of modality incompleteness.

13.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Decoherence-free algebras in quantum dynamics

arXiv:2403.12926v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In this Article we analyze the algebraic properties of the asymptotic dynamics of finite-dimensional open quantum systems in the Heisenberg picture. In particular, a natural product (Choi-Effros product) can be defined in the asymptotic regime. Motivated by this structure, we introduce a new space called the Choi-Effros decoherence-free algebra. Interestingly, this space is both a C*-algebra with respect to the composition product, and a B*-algebra with respect to the Choi-Effros product. Moreover, such space admits a direct-sum decomposition revealing a clear relationship with the attractor subspace of the dynamics. In particular, the equality between the attractor subspace and the Choi-Effros decoherence-free algebra is a necessary and sufficient condition for a faithful dynamics. Finally, we show how all the findings do not rely on complete positivity but on the much weaker Schwarz property.

14.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Exactly Solvable Quantum Model with Spin-Dependent Coulomb Interaction

arXiv:2501.05103v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In this work, we report an exactly solvable quantum model featuring a spin-dependent Coulomb interaction, described by the spin vector potential \(\vec{\mathcal{A}} = k (\vec{r} \times \vec{S}) / r^2\) together with a Coulomb-type scalar potential \(\varphi = \kappa / r\) . The model is governed by the Schrödinger-type Hamiltonian \(\mathcal{H}_S = \vec{\Pi}^2 / (2M) + q \varphi\) in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics and by the Dirac-type Hamiltonian \(\mathcal{H}_D = c \vec{\alpha} \cdot \vec{\Pi} + \beta M c^2 + q \varphi\) in relativistic quantum mechanics, where \(\vec{\Pi} = \vec{p} - (q/c)\vec{\mathcal{A}}\) is the canonical momentum. We demonstrate two main results: (i) Just as the Coulomb-type scalar potential \(\mathcal{S}_Maxwell = \{\vec{\mathcal{A}} = 0,\ \varphi = \kappa / r\}\) is a local exact solution of Maxwell's equations on $r\neq0$, the gauge potential \(\mathcal{S}_YM = \{\vec{\mathcal{A}} = k (\vec{r} \times \vec{S}) / r^2,\ \varphi = \kappa / r\}\) constitutes a local exact solution of the Yang–Mills equations on the punctured region $r\neq0$. (ii) Both Hamiltonians \(\mathcal{H}_S\) and \(\mathcal{H}_D\) can be solved exactly in the presence of this spin-dependent Coulomb interaction. The resulting energy spectra are derived, and they naturally reduce to those of the ordinary hydrogen atom when the spin-dependent terms are neglected. Finally, we clarify the quantization conditions and the fixed-background interpretation of the model.

16.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Systematic Evaluation of Novel View Synthesis for Video Place Recognition

The generation of synthetic novel views has the potential to positively impact robot navigation in several ways. In image-based navigation, a novel overhead view generated from a scene taken by a ground robot could be used to guide an aerial robot to that location. In Video Place Recognition (VPR), novel views of ground locations from the air can be added that enable a UAV to identify places seen by the ground robot, and similarly, overhead views can be used to generate novel ground views. This paper presents a systematic evaluation of synthetic novel views in VPR using five public VPR image databases and seven typical image similarity methods. We show that for small synthetic additions, novel views improve VPR recognition statistics. We find that for larger additions, the magnitude of viewpoint change is less important than the number of views added and the type of imagery in the dataset.

17.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Achieving Heisenberg limit under noisy conditions with quantum Zeno dynamics and dynamical decoupling

arXiv:2606.13205v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Quantum Zeno dynamics (QZD) and dynamical decoupling (DD) are useful tools that enable the effective suppression of noise in quantum systems. We consider the problem of when (i) noise can be suppressed and (ii) Heisenberg limit (HL) can be achieved in quantum metrology, and prove necessary and sufficient conditions for when QZD and DD are useful for achieving these two goals. We also show that in the Markovian regime, there are scenarios where preventing errors using QZD/DD may enable HL to be achieved where current QEC methods may not. Finally, we demonstrate that the combination of both techniques can allow individually imperfect QZD and DD strategies to saturate HL.

18.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

LLM-as-Judge in Education: A Curriculum-Grounded Marking Pipeline

arXiv:2606.17507v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) are increasingly applied to question generation and automated assessment. However, deploying LLMs in preparation for high-stakes exams requires more than prompt engineering; it demands software pipelines that systematically ground model outputs in authorised curriculum artefacts and marking guidelines issued by education authorities. This paper presents a curriculum-grounded, configurable LLM-as-Judge pipeline for question-level marking, co-developed with an industrial partner, to support exam preparation for university admission. The pipeline identifies the relevant topics, subtopics, and cognitive demand of a question, and assembles verifiable and authorised context to support LLM judgement. Curriculum intent is operationalised through concrete syllabus artefacts, including prescribed verbs and outcomes, performance band descriptors, glossary definitions, and marking-guideline principles. A staged LLM workflow is employed to first generate question-specific rubrics, capturing structured expectations of performance, and then derive and evaluate marking criteria used to allocate marks to student responses. This design improves consistency, transparency, and alignment with official marking practices. Preliminary evaluation shows that the proposed LLM-as-Judge pipeline delivers marking outcomes comparable to human tutors, while yielding justifications that are more traceable to authorised curriculum artefacts and marking standards. The pipeline has also been integrated into an online study platform, where early deployment data provide initial insights into operational usage and manual overrides.

19.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

CD-RCM: Generalizable Continuous-Depth Novel View Synthesis for Reflectance Confocal Microscopy

Reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) provides noninvasive, cellular-resolution "optical biopsies" of human skin in vivo by acquiring en-face images at successive depths, forming a sparse z-stack. Due to optical limitations, these stacks are anisotropic 3D volumes with lateral resolution (0.5 $\mu$m) $\sim$6 times higher compared to axial resolution, which is defined by the optical sectioning (3 $\mu$m), limiting the interpretation of tissue. Our goal is to provide continuous-depth visualization by interpolating intermediate sections and making the 3D volume isotropic. Such a representation permits arbitrary-direction sectioning, including histopathology-like cross-sectional examination, without requiring per-patient optimization. To that end, we introduce the first RCM-specific novel-view synthesis (NVS) approach, CD-RCM, a feedforward model that predicts realistic, unseen depths from sparsely sampled RCM stacks. Classical neural rendering methods focus on reconstruction from surface-level multi-view observations. In contrast to surface-level camera views, RCM can acquire optically sectioned en-face images of tissue beyond the surface up to 200 $\mu$m. However, during visualization of the RCM stacks, observations of the shallower sections (towards the surface) obscure the deeper ones. This unique axial imaging geometry and layer-dependent anatomical organization motivated our development of a tailored architectural and training framework that explicitly accounts for RCM's depth-resolved, occlusive imaging physics. Experiments demonstrate that CD-RCM achieves high-fidelity novel-view synthesis with sub-second inference time.

20.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

Variational autoencoders with latent high-dimensional steady geometric flows for dynamics

Authors:

arXiv:2410.10137v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We develop Riemannian approaches to variational autoencoders (VAEs) for PDE-type ambient data with regularizing geometric latent dynamics, which we refer to as VAE-DLM, or VAEs with dynamical latent manifolds. We redevelop the VAE framework such that manifold geometries, subject to our geometric flow, embedded in Euclidean space are learned in the intermediary latent space developed by encoders and decoders. By tailoring the geometric flow in which the latent space evolves, we induce latent geometric properties of our choosing, which are reflected in empirical performance. We reformulate the traditional evidence lower bound (ELBO) loss with a considerate choice of prior. We develop a linear geometric flow with a steady-state regularizing term. This flow requires only automatic differentiation of one time derivative, and can be solved in moderately high dimensions in a physics-informed approach, allowing more expressive latent representations. We discuss how this flow can be formulated as a gradient flow, and maintains entropy away from metric singularity. This, along with an eigenvalue penalization condition, helps ensure the manifold is sufficiently large in measure, nondegenerate, and a canonical geometry, which contribute to a robust representation. Our methods focus on the modified multi-layer perceptron architecture with tanh activations for the manifold encoder-decoder. We demonstrate, on our datasets of interest, our methods perform at least as well as the traditional VAE, and oftentimes better. Our methods can outperform this and a VAE endowed with our proposed architecture, frequently reducing out-of-distribution (OOD) error between 15% to 35% on select datasets. We highlight our method on ambient PDEs whose solutions maintain minimal variation in late times. We provide empirical justification towards how we can improve robust learning for external dynamics with VAEs.

21.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Bayesian Networks with Latent Time Embedding for Stage-Aware Causal Modeling of Alzheimer's Disease Progression

arXiv:2606.15784v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression is often described through the amyloid-tau-neurodegeneration, or AT(N), cascade. However, most longitudinal models represent this cascade either as a fixed sequence of biomarkers or as a black-box forecasting task. This makes it difficult to determine when biologically guided biomarker relationships influence future regional pathology. In this study, we introduce Bayesian Networks with Latent Time Embedding (BN-LTE), a Bayesian structural framework for stage-aware modeling of AD progression. BN-LTE estimates disease pseudotime from baseline biomarker profiles and constrains directed dependencies according to biologically plausible AT(N) ordering. Posterior spline-varying structural equations are then used to link initial multimodal measurements with future annualized regional tau-PET change. Across repeated subject-disjoint evaluations using ADNI data, BN-LTE shows strong spatial reconstruction of tau progression compared with the included forecasting baselines. Beyond spatial reconstruction, BN-LTE recovers posterior stage-varying AT(N)-constrained effects and identifies a mid-pseudotime window of amyloid sensitivity. This window is supported by model-implied g-formula contrasts, root-adjusted AIPW, mechanism-sensitive ablations, and robustness analyses across spline and prior specifications. Overall, these findings position BN-LTE as a Bayesian structural framework for forecasting tau progression while examining stage-dependent AT(N)-cascade mechanisms in observational longitudinal neuroimaging data. Our code is available at https://github.com/danleneurocom/BN-LTE.

22.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19

FUSE: Frequency-domain Unification and Spectral Energy Alignment for Multi-modal Object Re-Identification

Despite significant progress in multi-modal Re-Identification (ReID), existing methods tend to emphasize low-frequency cues. Consequently, they focus on attributes such as color, illumination, and coarse appearance, while overlooking mid and high-frequency structures that encode geometric, textural, and identity-discriminative details. This imbalance leads to incomplete spectral representations and unstable cross-modal alignment. To overcome these limitations, we introduce FUSE, a frequency-domain framework that reformulates multi-modal ReID as a two-stage process of spectral disentanglement and energy alignment. The proposed Spectral Decomposition Module (SDM) adaptively partitions features into low, mid, and high-frequency subspaces, enabling hierarchical spectral modeling. The Cross-Modal Alignment Module (CAM) further enforces energy alignment and subspace complementarity across modalities via frequency-consistency regularization. In addition, FUSE incorporates learnable frequency modulation to enhance robustness under varying illumination and heterogeneous sensor conditions. Extensive experiments on RGBNT201, RGBNT100, and MSVR310 show that FUSE achieves 9.1\% mAP and 9.5\% Rank-1 improvements, establishing an interpretable frequency-domain paradigm for multi-modal representation learning.

23.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-11

Development of iADJUST: a theory-informed, patient co-designed digital psychological intervention for adjustment in chronic kidney disease

Background: Psychological distress is common in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and is associated with reduced quality of life, treatment non-adherence, and worse clinical outcomes. Distress in CKD is also linked to difficulties adjusting to the demands of illness management. Despite this, psychological support remains inconsistently integrated within kidney care pathways, and existing interventions often lack clear theoretical specification and explicit targeting of mechanisms underpinning adjustment to CKD. Objectives: To describe the systematic development of iADJUST, a theory-informed patient co-designed digital psychological intervention targeting key cognitive and behavioural mechanisms involved in adjustment to CKD. Methods: Intervention development was guided by the Medical Research Council framework for complex interventions. A structured, iterative process integrated empirical evidence, psychological theory, and patient and public involvement and engagement. The Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation and cognitive behavioural theories informed the identification of modifiable maintaining mechanisms associated with adjustment to CKD. Intervention components were mapped onto these mechanisms and refined through co-design with people living with CKD. Results: iADJUST is a six-session self-guided digital psychological intervention delivered over 12 weeks and supplemented by therapist contact. The intervention targets illness-related uncertainty, fatigue-related activity dysregulation, catastrophic what-if thinking, self-critical evaluation, and behavioural withdrawal. It integrates psychoeducation, cognitive and behavioural strategies, maintenance planning, and elements from acceptance and commitment therapy and compassion-focused approaches. Content is delivered through video, audio, and guided tasks and activities. Conclusion: iADJUST provides a theory-informed, evidence-based psychological intervention for CKD explicitly mapping intervention components to maintaining cognitive and behavioural mechanisms implicated in adjustment. Feasibility evaluation is underway.

24.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

T Cell Receptor repertoire analysis reveals antigenic convergence and immunotherapeutic opportunities in Prostate Cancer

Background: The T-cell receptor {beta} (TCR{beta}) repertoire reflects antigen-driven adaptive immune responses and provides insight into tumor-immune interaction. In prostate cancer (PCa), the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment limits effective T-cell activation, and the antigenic drivers shaping intratumoral TCR repertoires remains poorly defined. This study aimed to characterize matched tumor and peripheral TCR{beta} repertoires from treatment-naive PCa patients and to identify shared clonotypes and antigenic specificities associated with disease severity. Methods: Next-generation sequencing was used to profile TCR{beta} repertoires from matched tumor biopsies and peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained from treatment-naive PCa patients. Repertoires clonality, diversity, and was assessed using established metrics. Antigenic convergence was evaluated using GLIPH2 to identify shared CDR3{beta} motifs and predicted tumor-associated antigen (TAA) recognition, followed by functional validation using IFN-{gamma} ELISpot and T-cell expansion assays. Results: Tumor-derived TCR{beta} repertoires displayed reduced richness and increased clonality compared with peripheral blood mononuclear cells, consistent with local antigen-driven expansion. High-grade tumors demonstrated greater interpatient clonotype sharing and motif-level convergence, indicative of recognition of common TAAs. GLIPH2 analysis associated expanded clonotypes with epitopes derived from prostate-specific G-protein coupled receptor (PSGR), prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), and prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Functional validation confirmed that peptide pools containing PSGR- and PSMA-derived epitopes induced IFN-{gamma} production and antigen-specific T-cell proliferation in vitro. Conclusions: These findings reveal an oligoclonal, antigen-driven intratumoral TCR{beta} landscape and identify PSGR and PSMA as immunogenic, potentially actionable targets. Integration of TCR profiling with antigen discovery pipelines may support the development of TCR-based biomarkers and precision immunotherapeutic strategies in prostate cancer.

25.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-23

Systemic and Mucosal Antibody Correlates of Protection Against Bordetella pertussis in a Controlled Human Infection Model

Abstract Background Despite high vaccination coverage, pertussis has resurged globally. Whole-cell (wP) and acellular (aP) pertussis vaccines induce distinct immune profiles, yet immune correlates of protection against infection and symptomatic disease remain incompletely defined. We leveraged a controlled human infection model (CHIM) to identify systemic and mucosal humoral signatures associated with resistance to Bordetella pertussis. Methods Adults with documented history of vaccination had previously been enrolled in a CHIM study and challenged intranasally with B. pertussis D420. For the present work, longitudinal serum and nasal wash samples were analyzed using systems serology to comprehensively profile antibody features. Multivariate modeling and network analyses were performed to define discriminatory immune features. Findings Baseline aP vaccine antigen-specific antibodies did not distinguish infection outcomes. In wP-primed individuals, protection from B. pertussis infection was associated with broad, high-magnitude, polyfunctional antibody responses targeting non-canonical antigens, including BrkA, TcfA, OmpP, OmlA, FauA, and Pal. Protective signatures associated with resistance to symptomatic disease in both vaccine groups were characterized by enhanced Fc-receptor-engaging antibody profiles with distinct antigenic patterns shaped by vaccine history. Importantly, while conventional aP vaccine antigens failed to reliably distinguish individuals susceptible to infection or symptom development, correlates generated by integrated serum and mucosal models based on select non-canonical antigens achieved near-perfect discrimination of infection and symptom outcomes, outperforming models restricted to aP-vaccine. antigens only. Interpretation Resistance to infection was largely restricted to wP-primed individuals and was associated with integrated systemic and mucosal antibody responses directed against antigens beyond those included in acellular vaccines. Protection from symptomatic disease in both vaccine groups was linked to distinct antibody response signatures, shaped by prior vaccination history. These findings indicate that immune mechanisms preventing infection differ from those limiting clinical disease and provide a framework for redesign of next-generation pertussis vaccines aimed at blocking infection and symptomatic disease.