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

FashionChameleon: Towards Real-Time and Interactive Human-Garment Video Customization

Human-centric video customization, particularly at the garment level, has shown significant commercial value. However, existing approaches cannot support low-latency and interactive garment control, which is crucial for applications such as e-commerce and content creation. This paper studies how to achieve interactive multi-garment video customization while preserving motion coherence using only single-garment video data. We present FashionChameleon, a real-time and interactive framework for human-garment customization in autoregressive video generation, where users can interactively switch garment during generation. FashionChameleon consists of three key techniques: (i) Instead of training on multi-garment video data, we train a Teacher Model with In-Context Learning on a single reference-garment pair. By retaining the image-to-video training paradigm while enforcing a mismatch between the reference and garment image, the model is encouraged to implicitly preserve coherence during single-garment switching. (ii) To achieve consistency and efficiency during generation, we introduce Streaming Distillation with In-Context Learning, which fine-tunes the model with in-context teacher forcing and improves extrapolation consistency via gradient-reweighted distribution matching distillation. (iii) To extend the model for interactive multi-garment video customization, we propose Training-Free KV Cache Rescheduling, which includes garment KV refresh, historical KV withdraw, and reference KV disentangle to achieve garment switching while preserving motion coherence. Our FashionChameleon uniquely supports interactive customization and consistent long-video extrapolation, while achieving real-time generation at 23.8 FPS on a single GPU, 30-180$\times$ faster than existing baselines.

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

Filtered ANN as a Phase Transition: When Selectivity-Estimation Error Causes Plan Regret

arXiv:2606.16341v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A filtered approximate-nearest-neighbor (ANN) query returns the k nearest vectors among those satisfying an attribute predicate P of selectivity s. The best execution strategy – pre-filter, post-filter, or in-filter – changes with s, so a system must estimate s and choose. We model this as an argmax over a landscape with phases (regions where each strategy wins) separated by boundaries, and show that selectivity-estimation error produces plan regret – recall lost versus the oracle strategy – only in the critical regions around those boundaries. The regret is a wedge of log-width equal to the multiplicative estimation error epsilon and height equal to the local cliff |V'(s*)| epsilon; the flip-margin 1/|V'(s*)| is the condition number of a sibling cardinality-estimation study reappearing as the local boundary theory. The two phase boundaries follow from independent mathematics: order statistics place the post-filter cliff at s ~ k/K, and site percolation places the in-filter cliff at s_c ~ 0.83/M for graph degree M (corpus-size independent). Criticality exists only under a constrained budget B < sqrt(k n). Under pre-registered decision rules we confirm, on synthetic sweeps and real SIFT1M, that regret concentrates ~290x at the boundary and that the regret curves obey a finite-size scaling collapse onto one universal wedge across two decades of corpus size. A real approximate index does not mis-locate the boundary, but a biased cost model opens a persistent miscalibration band that estimation-error robustness cannot fix. The contribution is a characterization, not a new index. Code and the full pre-registration are public.

03.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

Handling Feature Heterogeneity with Learnable Graph Patches

arXiv:2606.17667v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In recent years, the rapid development of foundation models and graph pre-training technologies has spurred increasing interest in constructing a universal pre-trained graph model or Graph Foundation Model (GFM). However, a significant challenge is that existing models are unable to address feature heterogeneity in graph data without textual information, which hinders the transferability of graph models across different datasets. To bridge this gap, we propose the concept of learnable graph patches, which we regard as the smallest semantic units of any graph data. We decompose the graph into learnable graph patches by unfolding the node features and constructing corresponding patch structures separately. We then design a framework that mines transferable information from graph data across domains. Specifically, after extracting graph patches, we propose a patch encoder to extract knowledge from each unit and a patch aggregator to learn how the units are combined into a whole. Due to its domain-agnostic nature, the model can be applied to downstream data across different domains. Furthermore, we analyze the connection between our method and existing graph models, as well as the transferability of the node embeddings it generates. Empirically, our method not only achieves the capability to use multi-domain graphs for pre-training, but also shows enhanced performance across various downstream datasets and tasks. Moreover, we observe consistent improvement in downstream performance as the volume of pre-training data increases.

04.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19

Stitching and dimensionality effects on large artificially generated volume datasets

Generating large images via deep learning requires patching input data to accommodate hardware memory limitations, then assembling output patches, a process that can introduce stitching artifacts when neighboring patches do not align at borders. While these artifacts are known to affect segmentation tasks, their impact on generative models for style-transfer remains poorly understood. We investigated three stitching approaches and two patch dimensionalities (2D vs 3D) using cycleGAN models trained on cryo-electron microscopy datasets. We evaluated both perceptual quality and performance on downstream mitochondria segmentation. Our key findings reveal that: (1) FID scores fail to detect subtle stitching artifacts that significantly impact downstream segmentation performance, (2) 3D models with artifact-free stitching marginally outperform 2D models on downstream tasks, though the improvement barely justifies the computational cost, and (3) 2D models train more stably due to larger batch sizes. Additionally, we demonstrate that ensembling predictions from three orthogonal directions can improve low-quality volumes but provides no benefit for high-quality outputs. These results demonstrate that maximizing generative model performance on large scientific datasets requires careful consideration and mitigation of stitching artifacts, and that perceptual metrics alone are insufficient for evaluating domain adaptation quality in biomedical imaging.

05.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Machine Learning and the Random Walk Puzzle: Forecasting the CAD/USD Exchange Rate with Expanding Window Evaluation and SHAP Interpretability

arXiv:2606.15058v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This study examines whether machine learning (ML) models can outperform the naive random walk benchmark in forecasting the monthly USD/CAD exchange rate. Using daily data from the Bank of Canada spanning January 2017 to May 2026, resampled into 113 monthly observations, five ML models are evaluated: linear regression, random forest, gradient boosting, XGBoost, and AdaBoost. These models are benchmarked against the naive random walk model and exponential smoothing with Holt-Winters seasonality (ETS). All models are evaluated using an expanding-window framework to maintain strict out-of-sample integrity, and forecast-accuracy differences are assessed using the Diebold-Mariano (DM) test. Structural break detection identifies four significant breakpoints in the series, corresponding to the escalation of the US-China trade war in 2018, the COVID-19 economic recovery in 2020, the peak of the Bank of Canada rate-hiking cycle in 2022, and the start of the Bank of Canada rate-cutting cycle in 2024. SHAP, or Shapley Additive Explanations, analysis is applied to interpret the drivers of the best-performing ML model. The results show that the naive random walk model remains a formidable benchmark. Linear regression is the only model that statistically outperforms the naive random walk model, with a DM statistic of 3.0585 and a p value of 0.0071, whereas the ML ensemble models show only marginal differences. Random Forest with an expanding-window framework achieves the lowest MAPE of 1.17 percent among all models except the random walk. SHAP analysis confirms that short-term lags, particularly lag1 and lag2, and recent rolling means dominate predictions, consistent with the near-random-walk behavior of exchange rates.

06.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

AGDN: Learning to Solve Traveling Salesman Problem with Anisotropic Graph Diffusion Network

arXiv:2606.19185v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is a cornerstone of combinatorial optimization and arises in many practical scenarios. Although graph-based learning approaches have been explored for TSP, the question of how to exploit graph structure more effectively remains open. We present the Anisotropic Graph Diffusion Network (AGDN), a new Graph Neural Network framework designed to solve TSP. Our method tackles two central difficulties: (1) the lack of informative topological prior in fully connected TSP graphs, and (2) losing connected nodes in the optimal solution after the commonly used graph sparsification techniques. To overcome these issues, we construct a MixScore transition matrix that merges node similarity with pairwise distance, and we develop an anisotropic graph diffusion strategy that supports efficient information exchange across multiple hops. Comprehensive experiments spanning diverse instance sizes and node distributions show that AGDN consistently outperforms existing methods while keeping computation time competitive. Furthermore, AGDN generalizes well to problem sizes and distributions beyond those seen during training. The implementation is publicly available at: https://github.com/LabRAI/AGDN.

07.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

SwiftCTS: Fast Cross-Design Prediction and Pareto Optimization of Clock Tree Metrics via Few-Shot Calibration

arXiv:2606.11348v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Clock Tree Synthesis (CTS) is a computationally expensive stage in the physical design flow, requiring iterative EDA tool invocations to navigate a vast configuration space for optimal power, wirelength, and timing skew. Existing machine learning approaches require computationally expensive retraining or fine-tuning cycles to adapt to unseen macro architectures and are architecturally mismatched to the millions of evaluations demanded by exhaustive combinatorial search. We present SwiftCTS, a physics-informed surrogate framework that addresses both limitations simultaneously. By coupling lightweight, physics-grounded statistical features with gradient-boosted ensembles, SwiftCTS trains in under five seconds on a CPU and delivers sub-millisecond inference without GPU support. To handle out-of-distribution (OOD) designs without retraining or fine-tuning, we introduce a K-shot multiplicative calibration mechanism that anchors predictions to just one or two physical reference runs, reducing power prediction error from 24.5\% to 3.3\% and wirelength error from 56.6\% to under 1\% on unseen macros. Integrating this engine with an evolutionary optimizer, SwiftCTS evaluates 100,000 CTS configurations in under ten seconds, yielding Pareto-optimal frontiers that are physically validated within the OpenROAD flow. Closed-loop validation confirms prediction errors below 0.5\% for power and wirelength, and timing skew predictions within five picoseconds on an OOD benchmark, consistently outperforming default tool heuristics across all target metrics. Code publicly available at: \href{https://anonymous.4open.science/r/SwiftCTS-7E6E}{https://github.com/BarsatKhadka/SwiftCTS}

08.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

CineDance: Towards Next-Generation Multi-Shot Long-Form Cinematic Audio-Video Generation

The fidelity and structural diversity of training datasets fundamentally determine the capabilities of video generation models. While commercial systems showremarkableabilitytogeneratecinematicnarratives, the progress of open-source models remains limited by the scarcity of high-quality training data. To bridge this gap, we introduce CineDance-1M, a large-scale, open research Text-to-Audio-Video (T2AV) dataset designed specifically for multi-shot, long-form joint audio-video generation. Averaging 92.8 seconds and 24.2 continuous shots per video, it provides configurable, structured annotations for both audio and video modalities. This exceptional quality is achieved through a rigorous three-stage curation pipeline: i) diverse sourcing and comprehensive cleansing, ii) film-theory-inspired narrative parsing, and iii) hierarchical dual-modal captioning. For a comprehensive assessment, we propose CineBench, featuring a diverse prompt suite and a six-dimensional, human-aligned metric system tailored for complex narrative audio-video evaluation. Furthermore, we adapt LTX-2.3 into CineDance, which demonstrates exceptional single-modality quality alongside precise audio-video alignment and robust subject and environment consistency, effectively validating our curation strategy and the high quality of CineDance-1M. We anticipate that this work will serve as a solid foundation for accelerating future research in multi-shot, long-form joint audio-video generation. Our project page is available at https://aliothchen.github.io/projects/CineDance/.

09.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

VISTA: Video Interaction Spatio-Temporal Analysis Benchmark

Existing benchmarks for Vision-Language Models (VLMs) primarily evaluate spatio-temporal understanding on simple single-action videos, closed attribute sets and restricted entity types, failing to capture the freeform, multi-action interactions between diverse entities which characterize real-world video understanding. Furthermore, the lack of a systematic framework for analyzing model failures across complementary spatio-temporal axes hinders comprehensive evaluation. To address these gaps, we introduce VISTA, a Video Interaction Spatio-Temporal Analysis benchmark designed for open-set, multi-entity and multi-action spatio-temporal understanding in VLMs. VISTA decomposes videos into interpretable entities, their associated actions, and relational dynamics, enabling multi-axis diagnostics and unified assessment of relational, spatial, and temporal understanding. Our benchmark integrates multiple datasets into a single interaction-aware taxonomy and comprises ~12K curated video-query pairs spanning diverse scenes and complexities. We systematically evaluate 11 state-of-the-art VLMs on VISTA, and break down aggregate performance across our taxonomy to reveal shortcomings and pronounced spatio-temporal biases obscured by traditional metrics. By providing detailed, taxonomy-driven diagnostics on a challenging dataset, VISTA offers a nuanced framework to guide advances in model design, pretraining strategies, and evaluation protocols. Overall, VISTA is the first, large-scale, interaction-aware diagnostic benchmark for spatio-temporal understanding in VLMs.

10.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Unifying Post-hoc Explanations of Knowledge Graph Completions

arXiv:2507.22951v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Knowledge Graphs organize information as entity-relation-entity triples, enabling machine learning models to predict plausible missing triples in a task known as Knowledge Graph Completion (KGC). Post-hoc explainability for KGC addresses the problem of identifying which triples most influence the predictions of machine learning models. Currently, the field lacks formalization and consistent evaluations, hindering reproducibility and cross-study comparisons. This paper argues for a unified taxonomy for post-hoc explainability in KGC. First, we propose a characterization of post-hoc explanations via multi-objective optimization that unifies existing post-hoc explainability algorithms in KGC and the explanations they produce, balancing explanation effectiveness and conciseness. Next, we examine improved evaluation protocols based on popular metrics, such as Mean Reciprocal Rank and Hits@k, through illustrative experiments. Finally, we stress the importance of interpretability as the ability of explanations to address queries meaningful to end users. By unifying methods and discussing evaluation standards, this work puts forward a case for more reproducible and impactful research in KGC explainability.

11.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

A Comparative Study of Pretrained Transformer Models for Quranic ASR: Speech Representations, Label Formats, and Dataset Composition

arXiv:2606.19747v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Quran Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) aims to convert Quranic recitation into text, enabling applications such as aided memorisation tools and Quranic search engines. However, existing ASR models often exhibit high Word Error Rates (WER) on user-recited verses and lack full coverage of the Quranic corpus. This paper presents a systematic empirical study of domain-specific fine-tuning of pretrained Transformer-based models for Quranic ASR, using advanced speech feature extraction methods: Wav2Vec2.0, HuBERT, and XLS-R. These models apply self-supervised learning by masking portions of input audio and using Transformer architectures to learn context-aware speech features. The pretrained models are fine-tuned on a filtered Quranic dataset exceeding 870 hours of professional and user recitations. Through comprehensive ablation studies across feature extractors, output label formats, training strategies, and clip durations, we identify the key factors that affect transcription accuracy in this domain. Our best-performing configuration achieves a WER of 0.08 on the EveryAyah subset and 0.11 on the combined EveryAyah+Tarteel setting, representing roughly a five-percentage-point gain over the Citrinet baseline (WER = 0.163) while reducing combined-model training time from 140 hours to 40 hours. Arabic text without diacritics yields the best fine-tuning results, and Wav2Vec2-XLSR-53 provides the strongest overall representation. Future work includes improving dataset quality and developing phoneme-aware models to extract deeper speech feature representations for Tajweed-sensitive applications.

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

RAMS: Resource-Adaptive and Detection-Conditioned Model Switching for Embedded Edge Perception

Edge object detection on embedded hardware requires balancing inference latency and detection quality under changing resource pressure. We present RAMS, a lightweight runtime controller that monitors device pressure, calibrates switching thresholds from idle behavior, and dynamically selects among three resident YOLOv8 tiers (NANO/SMALL/MEDIUM at 320/416/640 px) without model-reload latency. RAMS defines five switching policies, including two detection-conditioned variants that prevent aggressive downgrades after recent vulnerable-road-user (VRU) detections. We further introduce the VRU-Weighted Accuracy Score (SWAS), a scalar metric for offline policy comparison without ground-truth annotations, together with an oracle-bounded variant that separates detector circularity from genuine tier-retention benefit. Across Raspberry Pi 5, x86 laptops, and Jetson Orin ONNX/TensorRT deployments, the same controller equations operate over a 37x latency range. On Jetson Orin TensorRT under heavy load, the safety2 policy achieves 3.41 ms mean latency, 5.6x faster than fixed-MEDIUM inference, while retaining 74% of its proxy accuracy through near-NANO operation with selective SMALL and MEDIUM locks during VRU-positive windows. Detection-conditioned switching improves SWAS by 25.4% under oracle scoring and 47.3% under detector-derived scoring relative to threshold-only policies under heavy load. Live KITTI evaluation reports per-tier VRU recall of 24.2%, 41.2%, and 59.0%, showing that reactive overrides are fundamentally limited by baseline detector recall.

13.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-15

On the Poisson Follower Model

arXiv:2309.04864v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce a stochastic geometry dynamics inspired by opinion dynamics that captures the essence of modern asymmetric social networks with leaders and followers. Points in the Euclidean space represent opinions, and the leader of an agent is the one with the closest opinion. In this dynamics, each follower updates its opinion by halving the distance to its leader. We demonstrate that this simple dynamics and its iterations exhibit several interesting purely geometric phenomena related to the evolution of leadership and opinion clusters, which resemble those observed in social networks. We also show that when the initial opinions are randomly distributed as a stationary Poisson point process, the spatial frequency of each of these phenomena can be expressed through an integral geometry formula involving semi-algebraic domains. Finally, we analyze numerically the limiting behavior of this follower dynamics. In the Poisson case, the agents fall into two categories: ultimate followers, who continue updating their opinions indefinitely, and ultimate leaders, who adopt a fixed opinion after a finite time. Spatial discrete event simulations support all our findings.

14.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

"That's AI Slop, You Bot!" Studying Accusations, Evidence, and Credibility in Online Discourse Towards LLM-Generated Comments

arXiv:2606.12073v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Generative AI has made fluent prose cheap to produce, breaking the old promise to readers that good writing meant real thinking. How have readers responded, and what can this tell us about changing anti-AI attitudes? We analyzed 25 million comments from Hacker News and Reddit (2023-2026), combining LLM judgment on 7,500 sampled accusations of AI use, sentiment trajectories, speech-act coding of 300 confirmed accusations of AI use, and a matched-control test of accused versus non-accused parent comments. We found that the pejorative-label share of accusations rose more than tenfold on both platforms while a placebo vocabulary of pre-2022 inauthenticity terms (shill, astroturf) did not. This shift reflected a fast-growing trend of branding any suspicious or seemingly inauthentic prose as "AI slop". The slop frame now constitutes 94 percent of pejorative mentions, with the dominant comments shifting in tone from mockery toward gatekeeping and structural protest. The key surprise comes from a matched-control test which found that prose features that statistically distinguish AI from human text do not predict which human text gets accused as AI. The new accusations work as social gatekeeping of perceived authenticity without actually screening for AI. This research extends signaling theory by showing that substitute signals used socially can grow even when inaccurate if the underlying detection problem cannot be solved at the non-expert level. It shows that AI's effects on writing from the reader side are distinct from those on the production (writer) side. Detection technology cannot resolve this dynamic because the social function of accusations is increasingly to perform social gatekeeping and in-group signaling as opposed to identifying AI-generated writing.

15.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

Phenotyping TPF via Self-Supervised Learning: A Label-Agnostic Framework with Expert Validation

The full potential of artificial intelligence in tibial plateau fracture characterisation remains unrealised, constrained by a fundamental dependency on labelled datasets whose consistency cannot be guaranteed: conventional classification schemes such as Schatzker and AO/OTA suffer from inter-observer variability, causing supervised models to learn human disagreement rather than stable fracture morphology. We design, implement, and validate a label-agnostic framework that eliminates this constraint by learning fracture representations directly from imaging data without observer-assigned labels. A RadImageNet-pretrained ResNet-50 encoder is fine-tuned on 154 cleaned knee radiographs using the SimCLR contrastive objective, preceded by a data cleaning protocol and followed by UMAP dimensionality reduction and k-means clustering to discover four imaging-derived phenotypes. Phenotype validity is assessed through a blinded expert review protocol administered to two independent clinicians. The four phenotypes demonstrate robust stability (bootstrap ARI = 0.319 +/- 0.041), strong internal cohesion (silhouette = 0.511), and coherence ratings of 3-5/5 from both reviewers under blinded conditions; one phenotype was unanimously identified as exhibiting comminution – a high-complexity feature isolated without any supervisory signal. Inter-partition comparison against Schatzker labels yields ARI = 0.013, confirming orthogonality to conventional classification boundaries. Notably, expert reviewers anchored to established classification vocabularies perceived imaging-derived groups as heterogeneous precisely where Schatzker alignment was lowest, suggesting that Schatzker-trained perception and label-agnostic embedding geometry measure orthogonal dimensions. These findings establish label-agnostic SSL phenotyping as a reproducible and clinically interpretable complement to conventional classification.

16.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

The Autonomy Tax: Defense Training Breaks LLM Agents

arXiv:2603.19423v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents increasingly rely on external tools (file operations, API calls, database transactions) to autonomously complete complex multi-step tasks. Practitioners deploy defense-trained models to protect against prompt injection attacks that manipulate agent behavior through malicious observations or retrieved content. We reveal a fundamental capability-alignment paradox: defense training designed to improve safety systematically destroys agent competence while failing to prevent sophisticated attacks. Evaluating defended models against undefended baselines across 97 agent tasks and 1,000 adversarial prompts, we uncover three systematic biases unique to multi-step agents. Agent incompetence bias manifests as immediate tool execution breakdown, with models refusing or generating invalid actions on benign tasks before observing any external content. Cascade amplification bias causes early failures to propagate through retry loops, pushing defended models to timeout on 99\% of tasks compared to 13\% for baselines. Trigger bias leads to paradoxical security degradation where defended models perform worse than undefended baselines while straightforward attacks bypass defenses at high rates. Root cause analysis reveals these biases stem from shortcut learning: models overfit to surface attack patterns rather than semantic threat understanding, evidenced by extreme variance in defense effectiveness across attack categories. Our findings demonstrate that current defense paradigms optimize for single-turn refusal benchmarks while rendering multi-step agents fundamentally unreliable, necessitating new approaches that preserve tool execution competence under adversarial conditions.

17.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

MA-ProofBench: A Two-Tiered Evaluation of LLMs for Theorem Proving in Mathematical Analysis

arXiv:2606.13782v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have made notable progress in automated theorem proving, yet existing formal benchmarks remain limited in both mathematical coverage and difficulty. Most are concentrated in areas that are easier to formalize, such as algebra and elementary number theory, and provide limited coverage of subfields that require deeper reasoning, including mathematical analysis. To address this gap, we introduce MA-ProofBench, to the best of our knowledge, the first formal theorem-proving benchmark dedicated to Mathematical Analysis. The benchmark contains 200 formalized theorems covering 6 core topics and 27 subcategories, including measure and integration theory, complex analysis, and functional analysis. The problems are divided into two difficulty levels, an undergraduate level (Level I, 100 problems) and a Ph.D. qualifying level (Level II, 100 problems), to evaluate how well LLMs perform formal reasoning at different mathematical depths. Each problem is constructed through a human-led, LLM-assisted formalization pipeline followed by independent expert review, ensuring that the formal statements remain faithful to the original mathematics. We evaluate a range of recent general-purpose reasoning models and formal theorem provers on MA-ProofBench. However, most models perform poorly: even the best-performing model, GPT-5.5, achieves only 16% Pass@8 on Level I and 5% on Level II, while most models stay close to 0% on Level II. Further analysis identifies Mathlib hallucinations and incomplete proofs as the two dominant failure modes, while an evaluation on the natural-language version of the benchmark exposes a clear gap between informal and formal reasoning. MA-ProofBench is intended to serve as a reliable reference for tracking progress in formal mathematical reasoning in advanced domains.

18.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

Anytime-Valid Confirmation of Label-Shift Corrections

Authors:

arXiv:2606.14028v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In small-batch scientific deployments, labeled target outcomes may be too scarce for reliable shift estimation even when unlabeled target inputs are available. We address the complementary setting where the practitioner has a pre-specified label-shift correction from domain knowledge and asks whether incoming labeled outcomes support it. We show that the per-observation likelihood ratio between a label-shift-corrected predictive and the source predictive is a conditional e-value, so its running product is a nonnegative martingale and Ville's inequality yields an anytime-valid confirmation rule. The log martingale equals the cumulative negative log-predictive density (NLPD) gap between the source and the corrected predictive, converting routine model monitoring into a formal sequential test. Rejection means the incoming data support the posited correction relative to the source predictive, but it is not a precise estimate of the degree of shift. Closed forms are available for GP sources with Gaussian label-shift ratios. GP regression simulations validate Type I control, finite-sample power, miscalibration sensitivity, and the small-batch advantage of a reliable prior over label-based re-estimation.

19.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

Contour Field based Elliptical Shape Prior for the Segment Anything Model

The elliptical shape prior information plays a vital role in improving the accuracy of image segmentation for specific tasks in medical and natural images. Existing deep learning-based segmentation methods, including the Segment Anything Model (SAM), often struggle to produce segmentation results with elliptical shapes efficiently. This paper proposes a new approach to integrate the prior of elliptical shapes into the deep learning-based SAM image segmentation techniques using variational methods. The proposed method establishes a parameterized elliptical contour field, which constrains the segmentation results to align with predefined elliptical contours. Utilizing the dual algorithm, the model seamlessly integrates image features with elliptical priors and spatial regularization priors, thereby greatly enhancing segmentation accuracy. By decomposing SAM into four mathematical sub-problems, we integrate the variational ellipse prior to design a new SAM network structure, ensuring that the segmentation output of SAM consists of elliptical regions. Experimental results on some specific image datasets demonstrate an improvement over the original SAM.

20.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

The Value Axis: Language Models Encode Whether They're on the Right Track

We investigate whether language models internally track the value of their current trajectory, defined as the likelihood that their ongoing strategy will achieve their goals. Using synthetic, in-context reinforcement learning data, we construct a "value" axis for Qwen3-8B. We find that activations along this axis distinguish between high vs. low verbalized confidence, rollouts without and with backtracking, and correct vs. corrupted code. Steering towards high value causally suppresses self-correction and reduces explanatory verbosity, while steering towards low value induces backtracking and exploration. We demonstrate that direct preference optimization (DPO) can increase the internal value of rewarded behaviors (e.g. use a certain word), causing the model to act more confidently after exhibiting them. Finally, we apply the value axis to study in-the-wild settings. For example, we find that Qwen assigns low value to politically sensitive chat queries after post-training and that supervised fine-tuning increases internal confidence within the training domain. Our results suggest that language models linearly encode an estimate of expected goal success that modulates their confidence in pursuing a direction.

21.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Tight Bounds for Quantum Phase Estimation and Related Problems

arXiv:2305.04908v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Phase estimation, due to Kitaev [arXiv'95], is one of the most fundamental subroutines in quantum computing. In the basic scenario, one is given black-box access to a unitary $U$, and an eigenstate $\lvert \psi \rangle$ of $U$ with unknown eigenvalue $e^{i\theta}$, and the task is to estimate the eigenphase $\theta$ within $\pm\delta$, with high probability. The cost of an algorithm for us is the number of applications of $U$ and $U^{-1}$. We tightly characterize the cost of several variants of phase estimation where we are no longer given an eigenstate, but are required to estimate the maximum eigenphase of $U$, aided by advice in the form of states (or a unitary preparing those states) which are promised to have at least a certain overlap $\gamma$ with the top eigenspace. We give algorithms and nearly matching lower bounds for all ranges of parameters. We show that a small number of copies of the advice state (or of an advice-preparing unitary) are not significantly better than having no advice at all. We also show that having lots of advice (applications of the advice-preparing unitary) does not significantly reduce cost, and neither does knowledge of the eigenbasis of $U$. We immediately obtain a lower bound on the complexity of the Unitary recurrence time problem, resolving an open question of She and Yuen~[ITCS'23]. Lastly, we study how efficiently one can reduce the error probability in the basic phase-estimation scenario. We show that a phase-estimation algorithm with precision $\delta$ and error probability $\epsilon$ has cost $\Omega\left(\frac{1}{\delta}\log\frac{1}{\epsilon}\right)$, matching an easy upper bound. This contrasts with some other scenarios in quantum computing (e.g., search) where error-probability reduction costs only a factor $O(\sqrt{\log(1/\epsilon)})$. Our lower bound uses a variant of the polynomial method with trigonometric polynomials.

22.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

DTVEM-RE: A Hierarchical Random-Effects Extension of the Differential Time-Varying Effect Model for Person-Specific Multi-Lag Estimation in Intensive Longitudinal Data

arXiv:2606.14116v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The Differential Time-Varying Effect Model (DTVEM) of Jacobson et al. (2019) is a popular tool for finding the best time lag in intensive longitudinal data, but it assumes everyone shares the same lag structure. The original authors named fixing this as future work, and it clashes with the premise of modern clinical research, which is that people differ. We present DTVEM-RE, an extension that lets each person have their own lag coefficients, with two versions of the confirmatory step: a discrete-time hierarchical Bayesian VAR in Stan, which pools across people and gives calibrated uncertainty, and a continuous-time per-person Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model in ctsem, which handles unevenly spaced beeps directly. We report four results. A simulation shows the Bayesian version recovers the between-person spread tau_a with bias below 0.01 and coverage of 90 to 93 percent. On the Fisher et al. (2017) EMA dataset (N=40), person-specific lag-1 effects vary by an order of magnitude across three mood items, the Bayesian and GAMM estimates agree closely (r=0.87 to 0.92), and DTVEM-RE gives the best one-step-ahead prediction among four discrete-time methods. A multi-lag version shows all nine tau_k values have credible intervals excluding zero, and the lag where people differ most changes across items, something lag-1-only methods like mlVAR cannot detect. Finally, the two versions agree almost exactly on person-specific lag-1 estimates (r >= 0.995), differing only as shrinkage predicts. DTVEM-RE is, to our knowledge, the first person-specific implementation of DTVEM-style lag detection, and it contains standard DTVEM as a special case.

23.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

Regularized Machine Learning for System Identification of Ship Free-Running Manoeuvres from CFD-Based Synthetic Data: A Comparative Study

arXiv:2606.17121v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This study investigates supervised machine learning techniques for identifying ship hydrodynamic coefficients from CFD-generated data from free-running simulations. Specifically, ordinary least squares and regularized regression methods are applied to Abkowitz-type manoeuvring models. Training and validation datasets are derived from URANS simulations of zig-zag and turning circle manoeuvres, which are validated against experimental benchmark data. The analysis evaluates the effects of coefficient set size, minimum training length required for predictive model training, and manoeuvre combinations on model performance. Results demonstrate the suitability of large-angle zig-zag manoeuvres for hydrodynamic system identification, provided that multicollinearity is addressed through appropriate coefficient selection, regression models, or input data variability. Larger coefficient sets offer greater model flexibility for variable conditions but are more prone to multicollinearity. Regularized regression techniques effectively mitigate multicollinearity and notably enhance prediction accuracy, as does incorporating more diverse manoeuvring data. Among tested models, Ridge regression provided the best compromise between computational efficiency and prediction accuracy.

24.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-15

ClaimFlow: Tracing the Evolution of Scientific Claims in NLP

Scientific papers advance $claims$ that later work supports, extends, or sometimes refutes. Yet existing methods for citation and claim analysis capture only fragments of this dialogue. In this work, we make these interactions explicit at the level of individual scientific claims. We introduce $\texttt{ClaimFlow}$, a claim-centric view of the NLP literature, built from $1{,}617$ ACL Anthology papers $(1979 - 2025)$ that are manually annotated with $5{,}689$ claims and $4{,}871$ cross-paper claim relations, indicating whether a citing paper $\texttt{supports}$, $\texttt{extends}$, $\texttt{qualifies}$, $\texttt{refutes}$, or references a cited claim as $\texttt{background}$. Building on $\texttt{ClaimFlow}$, we define a new task – $Claim Relation Classification$ – which requires models to infer the scientific stance toward a cited claim from the text and citation context. Evaluating neural models and large language models on this task, we report baseline performance of $0.81$ macro-F1, suggesting that the task is tractable while leaving room for improvement. We then scale this framework to $\sim$$13k$ NLP papers to study claim evolution across decades of NLP research. We show that $63.5\%$ claims are never reused; only $11.1\%$ are ever challenged. Widely propagated claims are more often $reshaped$ through qualification and extension than supported or refuted. Overall, $\texttt{ClaimFlow}$ offers a lens for examining how ideas shift and mature within NLP.

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arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Towards an Agent-First Web: Redesigning the Web for AI Agents

arXiv:2606.19116v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The World Wide Web was built on an assumption held for three decades: the primary consumer of web content is a human being. This permeates every layer; its access model presumes human visitors, its economics rest on human attention, and its content targets human perception. The rapid emergence of AI agents as intermediaries between humans and web content invalidates this assumption. Yet the web resists agents through blanket blocking, CAPTCHA-based exclusion, and economic models that treat agent access as extraction rather than legitimate interaction. This paper proposes a principled redesign across three layers. At the access layer, agents acting for humans should inherit equivalent access rights, governed by rate limiting and agent identification metadata in HTTP requests, analogous to browser headers, alongside a dual-layer architecture serving human-readable and agent-optimized content from the same domain. At the economic layer, we propose an intent-based tier framework grounded in the agent-as-human-proxy principle: an agent's economic obligation mirrors that of the human it represents. A token-based subscription model meters content in tokens rather than pageviews, alongside a commissioned content economy anchoring AI content production in human intentionality. At the content layer, we identify epistemic recursion, the self-referential loop in which AI-generated content is consumed by agents to produce further content, progressively detaching web knowledge from human ground truth. We propose the Agent Text Markup Language (ATML), a four-level human supervision tier model, and a cryptographic provenance chain to counter this threat. Together these constitute ten design principles for an agent-first internet, one in which agents are first-class citizens whose integration requires renegotiating the web's foundational social contract across access, economics, and content.