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01.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

On-Chip Quantum Randomness Amplification

Authors:
Lang Li↗Yutian Wu↗Giulio Chiribella↗Ravishankar Ramanathan↗

arXiv:2606.12173v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Randomness amplification, the task of extracting uniform private bits from biased seeds that may be partly known by a malicious third party, is of central importance in cryptography. The highest security in this task is provided by a class of quantum protocols known as device-independent, which however are challenging to integrate into scalable devices. Semi-device-independent (SDI) protocols are a promising alternative that guarantees security under few natural assumptions, such as bounds on the amount of energy used by the devices. Here, we provide the first demonstration of SDI randomness amplification on an integrated silicon photonic chip, achieving a throughput rate of 20 Mbps suitable for practical applications. This rate is achieved through a novel technique for SDI entropy certification, which delivers strictly tighter von Neumann entropy bounds compared to existing methods and remains valid even if the preparation and measurement devices share quantum correlations. Overall, the methods developed in this work enable the integration of SDI technology into portable telecom devices, opening up a new generation of quantum cryptographic hardware.

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02.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-16

The distribution of the de Moivre experiment

Authors:
Hac\`ene Belbachir↗Hamza Zeggada↗

arXiv:2606.15178v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this paper, we focus on de Moivre random experience which allows us to introduce the $ s- $Bernoulli distribution and the bi$ ^s $nomial distribution. We present some probabilistic properties such as the expectation, the variance, the skewness and kurtosis coefficients, the moments and the generating functions. Then we establish that for $ s\in\mathbb{N} $, the bi$ ^s $nomial distribution converges to a limiting Poisson and normal distributions when $ n\rightarrow\infty. $

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03.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Efficient Zeroth-Order Federated Finetuning of Language Models on Resource-Constrained Devices

Authors:
Mohamed Aboelenien Ahmed↗Kilian Pfeiffer↗Ramin Khalili↗Heba Khdr↗J\"org Henkel↗

arXiv:2502.10239v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Federated Learning (FL) is a promising paradigm for finetuning Large Language Models (LLMs) across distributed data sources while preserving data privacy. However, finetuning such large models is challenging on edge devices due to its high resource demand. Zeroth-order Optimization (ZO) estimates gradients through finite-difference approximations, which rely on function evaluations under random perturbations of the model parameters. Consequently, ZO with task alignment provides a potential solution, allowing finetuning using only forward passes with inference-level memory requirements and low communication overhead, but it suffers from slow convergence and higher computational demand. In this paper, we propose a new ZO-based method that applies a more efficient technique to reduce the computational demand associated with using a large number of perturbations while preserving their convergence benefits. This is achieved by splitting the model into consecutive blocks and allocating a higher number of perturbations to the second block, enabling efficient reuse of intermediate activations to update the full network with fewer forward evaluations. Our evaluation on RoBERTa-large, OPT1.3B, LLaMa-3-3.2B models shows up to $3\times$ reduction in computation compared to the other ZO-based techniques, while retaining the memory and communication benefits over first-order federated learning techniques.

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04.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

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

Authors:
Xiwei Xu↗Chen Wang↗Jacky Jiang↗Phil Yang↗Qian Fu↗Mohan Dhall↗Wenjie Zhang↗Liming Zhu↗

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.

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05.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

LSTM-Based Detection of Structural Breaks in Property Insurance Loss Reserving: A Climate-Informed Approach

Authors:
Thomas Mbrice↗Shashwat Panigrahi↗

arXiv:2606.11463v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Accurate loss reserving is foundational to insurer solvency, yet accelerating climate driven catastrophes systematically violate the stability assumptions on which traditional actuarial methods depend. This white paper presents a research program testing whether Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks can detect and adapt to these structural breaks faster and more accurately than Chain Ladder, Bornhuetter Ferguson, and Cape Cod methods. Using 15 plus years of regulatory development triangle data from Florida and Louisiana, enriched with NOAA hurricane intensity indices and sea surface temperatures, we hypothesize a targeted improvement of 15, 20% in reserve accuracy for catastrophe exposed years, a threshold grounded both in the prior neural network reserving literature and in the formal convergence results developed here. Beyond empirical validation, we develop a theoretical framework grounding LSTM structural break detection in probabilistic terms, providing formal performance guarantees that compensate for the limited number of catastrophe events in the test period. We document the research design, methodology, expected contributions, and a candid assessment of limitations.

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06.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

Evaluation of AI-Generated Synthetic Data for Clinical Research in Secondary Cardiovascular Prevention among Dyslipidemia Patients

Authors:
Bonomi↗Werba↗J. P↗Saccani↗Lu↗L. L↗Coser↗Franchi↗Valsecchi↗Teruzzi↗Terragni↗Centenaro↗…

Background: Access to high-quality clinical data is essential for advancing medical research and developing effective medical statistical and Artificial Intelligence models. However, privacy regulations and logistical barriers often hinder timely access to real-world data. Synthetic data offer a promising solution, preserving the statistical characteristics of original datasets while protecting patient privacy. Objectives: This study investigates the use of synthetic data for secondary cardiovascular prevention in patients with dyslipidemia, using two real-world datasets from Centro Cardiologico Monzino. Methods: Given the high dimensionality and limited sample size of the datasets, we employed a custom generative framework based on Large Language Models (LLMs). Pre-trained LLMs were fine-tuned on original clinical records to synthesize tabular data replicating source-data distributions. Fine-tuning was performed within the Centro Cardiologico Monzino's secure infrastructure to ensure data sovereignty. We evaluate clinical utility and privacy using fidelity and privacy metrics, identifying the optimal generative model and benchmarking against traditional anonymization methods. Results: Synthetic data achieved a superior trade-off than classically anonymized datasets. Real and synthetic datasets showed strong agreement, with significant distributional differences limited to few variables. Models trained on synthetic data replicated key associations from the original dataset, including therapy modification and creatine phosphokinase as predictors of SAMS, and pharmacological intensity as the main driver of LDL-C reduction. Conclusions: Results support the feasibility of using synthetic data as a proxy for real-world datasets in exploratory analyses and model development. Despite slight attenuation of some effect sizes, preserved clinical relationships reinforce the validity of synthetic data in medical research.

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07.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-25

Hodge Spectral Surrogates for Topology-Constrained Optimization

Authors:
Satoshi Kanno↗Yoshi-aki Shimada↗

arXiv:2606.25194v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Topological information is widely used in data analysis, network design, and machine learning, and topological constraints naturally arise when optimizing or generating objects with prescribed homological structure. However, directly controlling Betti numbers and persistent homology is difficult because they are discrete and combinatorial. We propose a differentiable framework for topology-constrained optimization based on Hodge-spectral relaxations of homological constraints and low-pass spectral filters. From soft graphs and soft clique complexes, we construct Hodge-Laplacian-type spectral relaxations that unify graph clique complexes and Vietoris–Rips filtrations of point clouds. In the hard limit, the penalty-regularized ambient operator recovers the ordinary Hodge Laplacian on the active subcomplex, while in the soft regime it serves as a differentiable low-frequency spectral surrogate. Homological information is represented by zero and near-zero modes, and differentiable topological objectives are defined using heat filters, resolvent filters, and polynomial Laplacian moments. For point clouds, we show that the proposed Hodge spectral-filter losses yield more spatially distributed gradients, smoother scale-normalized behavior under persistence-pairing changes, and geometry-aware update directions than persistent-homology-based losses. For graph clique complexes, Laplacian moments control normalized first-Betti-type quantities and can be combined with ordinary graph-feature objectives. We also discuss connections to trace-based normalized Betti-number estimation, polynomial spectral methods, and possible quantum trace estimation.

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08.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-18

Attention as Frustrated Synchronization

Authors:
Joshua Nunley↗

A network of oscillators that synchronizes perfectly computes nothing further, so an attention architecture built from synchronization must locate its computation in structured departures from agreement. We introduce the Frustrated Synchronization Network (FSN), whose token states are phases on a torus and whose entire value pathway is one learned complex coupling kernel over harmonics and a one-step delay. Each component of the kernel is a frustration in the sense of the synchronization literature. The complex phases are static Kuramoto-Sakaguchi frustration angles, the signed harmonics are repulsive Daido components, and the delay term, which couples each token to the successors of the tokens it attends to, is algebraically identical to Kuramoto-Sakaguchi coupling whose frustration angle is the data's own transition, so next-token prediction is implemented as synchronization frustrated by the data. At matched one-million-parameter and training budgets on character-level text and code, the FSN's validation loss is below a tuned RoPE-SwiGLU transformer's at every epoch measured, and the comparison survives training the baseline to convergence: every thirty-epoch enwik8 seed finishes below the transformer's converged fifty-epoch loss of 1.611, and the FSN's completed fifty-epoch runs converge to 1.5953 +/- 0.0014. A variant with every feed-forward block replaced by mean-field coupling to learned collective modes, leaving no multilayer perceptron in the stack, tracks the transformer. On natural text the unfrustrated base layer falls behind the converged transformer at every copy depth, worst on long-range copy events; the kernel reverses the deficit at every depth of four and beyond. Headline comparisons are at the one-million-parameter scale; a scale ladder is complete through four million parameters with the advantage persisting, and remaining arms are marked as in progress.

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09.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

From Mechanistic to Compositional Interpretability

Authors:
Ward Gauderis↗Thomas Dooms↗Steven T. Homer↗Kola Ayonrinde↗Geraint A. Wiggins↗

arXiv:2605.08934v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Mechanistic interpretability aims to explain neural model behaviour by reverse-engineering learned computational structure into human-understandable components. Without a formal framework, however, mechanistic explanations cannot be objectively verified, compared, or composed. We introduce compositional interpretability, a category-theoretic framework grounded in the principles of compositionality and minimum description length. Compositional interpretations are pairs of syntactic and semantic mappings that must commute to enforce consistency between a model's decomposition and its observed behaviour. We deconstruct explanation quality into measures of faithfulness and complexity to cast interpretability as a constrained optimisation problem, and introduce compressive refinement to systematically restructure models into simpler parts without altering their function. Finally, we derive a parsimony criterion under which syntactic compression theoretically guarantees more concise, human-aligned explanations. Our framework situates prominent mechanistic methods as subclasses of refinement, and clarifies why their compressibility heuristics tend to align with human interpretability. Our work provides a measurable, optimisable blueprint for automating the discovery and evaluation of mechanistic explanations.

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10.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Optimizing resource allocation for accuracy in noisy variational quantum algorithms

Authors:
Harshit Verma↗Thomas Ayral↗Alexia Auff\`eves↗Robert Whitney↗

arXiv:2606.20153v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: For quantum algorithms to achieve their full potential, we need methodologies to optimize them, such as reaching a given output accuracy with minimal resource costs. Here, we develop such a methodology for a class of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) algorithms. We leverage simulations of a Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) to propose a phenomenological model of such algorithms that captures the complex relationship between algorithmic accuracy, algorithmic resource costs, and the noise that exists in realistic quantum hardware. For this, we take the algorithmic resource cost to be the total number of quantum gate-operations in the algorithm; minimizing this cost typically makes the algorithm faster and more energy-efficient. We consider the subtle trade-off between quantum circuit size (small circuits are too imprecise, but large ones are too noisy), and the number of iterations of that quantum circuit for the full algorithm to sufficiently converge. Using a noise-metric-resource methodology, we identify the sweet spot (of circuit size versus iterations) that minimizes the algorithmic resource costs for a desired algorithm accuracy. It also gives the circuit size that maximizes algorithm accuracy for a fixed resource cost. Our methodology provides a practical guideline for near-term deployment of variational algorithms on realistic noisy hardware, including hardware that uses error mitigation.

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11.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-24

Bilevel Data Curation for LLM Fine-tuning: Offline Selection and Online Self-Refining Generation

Authors:
Quan Xiao↗Yutong Xuan↗Gaowen Liu↗Ramana Rao Kompella↗Tianyi Chen↗

Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) datasets are critical to the downstream performance of large language models, yet they often contain low-quality or harmful question-response pairs. To improve SFT data quality, we develop a unified bilevel framework that combines offline data selection with the online self-refining generation. In the offline setting, bilevel data selection (BDS) selects question-response pairs from the offline SFT dataset to maximize the validation performance. We theoretically show that the optimal model given by BDS outperforms direct data mixing approach in useful data coverage. Moreover, we provide a global convergence analysis for gradient-based BDS approach for one-layer Transformer, showing that the epsilon-global optimum of offline BDS is achievable in finite time. Although efficient, offline BDS discards potentially harmful questions together with responses, thereby reducing question diversity. We address this limitation by refining the responses to selected questions using online self-refining generation framework. However, BDS is inefficient to update the response weights when responses are regenerated online. To address this issue, we introduce bilevel multi-objective optimization (BMO) for response-level weighting. We show that BMO recovers the same validation-aligned solution as BDS, but admits a closed-form importance-ratio weight that adapts to regenerated responses. Experiments on LLM quality enhancement and safety-aware fine-tuning demonstrate that the proposed framework consistently improves both data quality and downstream fine-tuning performance.

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12.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-24

A Theory of Saddle Escape in Deep Nonlinear Networks

Authors:
Divit Rawal↗Michael R. DeWeese↗

arXiv:2605.01288v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In deep networks with small initialization, training exhibits long plateaus separated by sharp feature-acquisition transitions. Whereas shallow nonlinear networks and deep linear networks are well studied, extending these analyses to deep nonlinear networks remains challenging. We derive an exact identity for the imbalance of Frobenius norms of layer weight matrices that holds for any smooth activation and any differentiable loss and use this to classify activation functions into four universality classes. On the permutation-symmetric submanifold, the identity combines with an approximate balance law to reduce the full matrix flow to a scalar ODE, giving a critical-depth escape time law $\tau_\star = \Theta(\varepsilon^{-(r-2)})$ governed by the number $r$ of layers at the bottleneck scale rather than the total depth $L$. We find that this same $r-2$ exponent is recovered under He-normal initialization with $r$ bottleneck layers rescaled by $\varepsilon$, where the symmetry manifold is preserved by the flow but not attracting. We find close agreement between our theory and numerical simulations.

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13.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-24

Statistical and Numerical Convergence in Stochastic Equilibrium

Authors:
David Staines↗

arXiv:2606.07469v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper sets out the most general computational and econometric implications of the rigorous stochastic equilibrium theory from SELCKE (Staines (2024a)) arXiv:2312.16214. The analytical backbone is the discovery that the system converges geometrically to long-run equilibrium, at a rate given by the greater of the eigenvalue or inverse eigenvalue (from outside) closest to the unit circle and the maximum shock persistence. High-order shocks converge faster. I develop a simulation procedure to test, with asymptotic power, whether stochastic equilibrium exists for a particular model. The fundamental approximation result asserts that, whatever the order of expansion or loss function, the stochastic steady state delivers the most accurate perturbation solution. I also show that super-consistent parameter estimators $O(1/T)$ arise whenever second-order terms vanish. Besides Calvo, I study stochastic equilibrium in two alternative pricing models. Dynamics simplify considerably. I bound the time the impulse response peaks, by the maximum lag in the errors. This lends empirical support to Taylor contracts, although there are issues surrounding unit roots and the strong cost-channel. For menu costs, I demonstrate that the initial price distribution decays away super-exponentially, producing a system equivalent to Calvo with an endogenous reset probability. The impact of idiosyncratic disturbances appears as an additional wedge between actual and efficient output. Blow-up of the objective function at the boundary is proven, with the help of new distributional arguments, so the model meets existing eigenvalue existence conditions for the recursive equilibrium. Along the way, new light is shone on existing theoretical models and statistical procedures.

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

On the Geometry of On-Policy Distillation

Authors:
Zhennan Shen↗Yanshu Li↗Qingyu Yin↗Chak Tou Leong↗Zhilin Wang↗Yanxu Chen↗Rongduo Han↗Sunbowen Lee↗Yi R. Fung↗

arXiv:2606.07082v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: On-policy distillation (OPD) is increasingly used to improve large language model reasoning, but its training dynamics remain poorly understood. We characterize the trajectory of OPD updates in parameter space and compare it with supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR). A suite of parameter-space diagnostics consistently places OPD in a relaxed off-principal regime: compared with SFT, its updates affect fewer weights and avoid principal directions more strongly, while compared with RLVR, they remain less tightly constrained. Beyond this static localization, OPD exhibits subspace locking: its cumulative updates rapidly enter a narrow low-dimensional channel. Constraining training to the update subspace formed early in training preserves OPD performance but substantially degrades SFT, indicating that the locked subspace is functionally sufficient for OPD. Control experiments further show that sparsifying the update tokens and shifting rollout generation off-policy preserve the rank dynamics, whereas mixing the OPD objective with RLVR changes them. Overall, these results suggest that OPD is not merely an intermediate point between SFT and RLVR, but induces its own update geometry in parameter space.

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15.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

LASA: A Weak Supervision Method for Open-Vocabulary Scene Sketch Semantic Segmentation

Authors:
Liwen Yi↗Xianlin Zhang↗Yue Zhang↗Yue Ming↗Xueming Li↗

Open-vocabulary scene sketch semantic segmentation aims to assign dense semantic labels to sparse line drawings based on flexible category vocabularies specified at inference time, without relying on pixel-level annotations during training. Unlike natural images, sketches lack texture and color cues, making semantic understanding heavily dependent on stroke layout and spatial configuration, a challenge that renders single-layer vision-language features inherently unstable. Our key observation is that attention maps from different Vision Transformer layers encode complementary spatial cues: shallow layers capture global structural layouts, while deeper layers focus on local stroke intersections and object parts. This suggests that cross-layer aggregation provides a more robust structural prior than any individual layer alone. Leveraging this insight, we propose a structure-aware framework built upon Layer-wise Accumulated Structural Attention (LASA), which aggregates multi-layer attention to guide hierarchical semantic alignment under weak supervision and refine predictions during inference. Experiments on FS-COCO, SFSD, and FrISS show that LASA improves mIoU by $+3.43$, $+8.01$, and $+15.74$ over the prior weakly supervised baselines, demonstrating consistent gains in both segmentation accuracy and spatial coherence. Our source code will be made publicly available.

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

A Bifurcation Theory Framework for Gradient Descent on the Edge of Stability

Authors:
Eric Gan↗

arXiv:2606.15551v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The Edge of Stability (EoS) phenomenon, where gradient descent operates with sharpness exceeding the classical convergence threshold yet the loss decreases over long timescales, is ubiquitous in modern deep learning but remains poorly understood in realistic settings. Prior rigorous analyses have been largely confined to scalar or low-dimensional losses with specific structural forms. In this work, we develop a bifurcation theory framework for gradient descent on the edge of stability that applies directly to overparameterized neural networks. By decomposing the training dynamics into components normal and tangent to the manifold of minimizers, we show that stable EoS training arises from a flip bifurcation in the normal direction, governed by the sign of the first Lyapunov coefficient, while the tangent dynamics drift toward regions of decreasing sharpness. Under mild spectral and geometric assumptions on the loss landscape, we prove convergence to the minimizing manifold when training at the EoS threshold. As a corollary, we recover and unify prior results: we show that the product-stability condition of Gan (2026) is an instance of our framework.

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17.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Many-body chirality of topological stabilizer states

Authors:
Tyler D. Ellison↗Dongjin Lee↗Zhi Li↗Amin Moharramipour↗Yasamin Panahi↗Beni Yoshida↗

arXiv:2606.20472v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A defining feature of chirality is the distinction between a system and its mirror image. Despite extensive experimental observations of chiral phases and theoretical advances, a quantum-information theoretic characterization of chirality based solely on the entanglement structure of many-body quantum states remains elusive. Here, we introduce the notion of many-body chirality by formulating it as an obstruction to transforming a quantum state into its complex conjugate through finite-depth local operations. We rigorously establish many-body chirality for stabilizer realizations of $\mathbb{Z}_d^{(k)}$ anyon theories, proving that complex conjugation can be implemented by local quantum channels if and only if the underlying anyon data are mirror invariant. This reveals forms of chirality that evade conventional diagnostics, including examples with vanishing modular commutator, vanishing chiral central charge, and commuting-projector realizations. We further show that this obstruction is intrinsically four-partite, while invisible to tripartite entanglement structure. Finally, we prove that $\mathbb{Z}_d^{(k)}$ states with $d>2$ possess intrinsic many-body imaginarity: their complex phase structure cannot be removed by finite-depth local unitaries. Remarkably, this includes states that are not many-body chiral.

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

NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Image Super-Resolution (x4): Methods and Results

Authors:
Zheng Chen↗Zongwei Wu↗Eduard Zamfir↗Kai Zhang↗Yulun Zhang↗Radu Timofte↗Xiaokang Yang↗Hongyuan Yu↗Cheng Wan↗Yuxin Hong↗Zhijuan Huang↗Yajun Zou↗…

This paper reviews the NTIRE 2024 challenge on image super-resolution ($\times$4), highlighting the solutions proposed and the outcomes obtained. The challenge involves generating corresponding high-resolution (HR) images, magnified by a factor of four, from low-resolution (LR) inputs using prior information. The LR images originate from bicubic downsampling degradation. The aim of the challenge is to obtain designs/solutions with the most advanced SR performance, with no constraints on computational resources (e.g., model size and FLOPs) or training data. The track of this challenge assesses performance with the PSNR metric on the DIV2K testing dataset. The competition attracted 199 registrants, with 20 teams submitting valid entries. This collective endeavour not only pushes the boundaries of performance in single-image SR but also offers a comprehensive overview of current trends in this field.

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

Projection and Quantisation: A Unifying View of Learning to Hash, from Random Projections to the RAG Era

Authors:
Sean Moran↗

Approximate nearest-neighbour search underpins large-scale retrieval and retrieval-augmented generation, yet its methods are studied in communities that seldom read one another. We argue that they form one field with three design choices. We develop the projection-quantisation-organisation lens: every method places its projections, places its quantisation thresholds, and organises the resulting codes for search. We test the lens with a reproducible measurement, released as the open BitBudget benchmark, and report three findings. First, the quantisation axis delivers the largest memory savings: a one-bit code with full-precision re-ranking matches uncompressed quality for six of seven embedders, the scanned code one thirty-second of the float's size. Second, the orderings the lens anticipates, including a learned-embedding regime where binary codes overtake an inverted-file product quantiser at a matched byte budget, recur as the embedding is enlarged. Third, given class labels, an eight-byte supervised code more than doubles the retrieval quality of the two-kilobyte task-agnostic float it replaces. We also recast the semantic identifiers of generative retrieval as quantisation codes. The main contribution is a single, tested account of compact-code search, from random projections to the retrieval-augmented era.

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20.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

Rethinking Text-to-Image as Semantic-Aware Data Augmentation for Indoor Scene Recognition

Authors:
Trong-Vu Hoang↗Quang-Binh Nguyen↗Dinh-Khoi Vo↗Hoai-Danh Vo↗Minh-Triet Tran↗Trung-Nghia Le↗

In the realm of computer vision, indoor image recognition presents challenges due to the intricate interplay of lighting conditions, occlusions, and diverse object arrangements within confined spaces. To address the lacks of training indoor images, we introduce a novel approach leveraging Stable Diffusion (SD) for the generation of synthetic images, which serve as a powerful data augmentation tool. The utilization of SD offers a principled framework for synthesizing diverse and realistic indoor scenes, thereby enriching the training data pool for robust indoor image recognition models. Experimental findings on the MIT Indoor Scene dataset reveal the potential of our proposed approach in enhancing the training of deep models when authentic data is limited. Furthermore, to prevent the misuse of SD synthetic images, we introduce a counter measure based on DIffusion Reconstruction Error (DIRE). The powerful DIRE presentation enables training robust classifiers only using lightweight deep models. Experiments show that our approach can perfectly recognize SD generated images with the accuracy of 100% using MobilenetV3.

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21.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

Searching Neural Architectures for Sensor Nodes on IoT Gateways

Authors:
Andrea Mattia Garavagno↗Edoardo Ragusa↗Antonio Frisoli↗Paolo Gastaldo↗

arXiv:2505.23939v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This paper presents an automatic method for the design of Neural Networks (NNs) at the edge, enabling Machine Learning (ML) access even in privacy-sensitive Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The proposed method runs on IoT gateways and designs NNs for connected sensor nodes without sharing the collected data outside the local network, keeping the data in the site of collection. This approach has the potential to enable ML for Healthcare Internet of Things (HIoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), designing hardware-friendly and custom NNs at the edge for personalized healthcare and advanced industrial services such as quality control, predictive maintenance, or fault diagnosis. By preventing data from being disclosed to cloud services, this method safeguards sensitive information, including industrial secrets and personal data. The outcomes of a thorough experimental session confirm that – on the Visual Wake Words dataset – the proposed approach can achieve state-of-the-art results by exploiting a search procedure that runs in less than 10 hours on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2.

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22.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

Impact of Hand Impairment and Occlusions on Hand Pose Estimation Accuracy in Augmented Reality Applications

Authors:
Damian M. Manzone↗Mathew Szymanowski↗Olga Taran↗Shuo Cai↗Melissa Marquez-Chin↗Tammy Zeng↗Hardeep Singh↗Cesar Marquez-Chin↗Jos\'e Zariffa↗

Mixed reality applications can be designed for hand rehabilitation. Augmented reality (AR) head mounted displays (HMDs) specifically allow for ecologically valid tasks because individuals can see their real environment and interact with real objects while receiving additional cues on the HMD. While these applications rely on accurate hand pose estimation, there is a gap in investigating the influence of hand impairment or occlusion from real-object interactions on pose estimation accuracy. Further, comparisons between AR HMD predictions and state-of-the-art pose estimation methods have not been established. The current study assessed pose estimation accuracy of the HoloLens 2 HMD and state-of-the-art pose estimation algorithms (WiLoR, HaMeR, WildHands, and MediaPipe) while individuals with cervical spinal cord injury (cSCI; n = 13, Neurological Level of Injury: C3-C6; American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale: A-D) and 15 uninjured controls interacted with clear and opaque objects. Ground truth estimates of 3D joint positions were generated via triangulation from a multi-camera setup. Pose estimation accuracy did not differ between the cSCI and uninjured control groups suggesting that 3D joint predictions from the HoloLens 2 and pose estimation algorithms can generalize to populations with hand impairment. Further, clear objects provided a small accuracy advantage over opaque objects (0.1 mm) and predictions from both WiLoR and HaMeR were slightly more accurate than the HoloLens 2 (2 mm). Overall, these results suggest that the HoloLens 2 may be viable for hand rehabilitation applications and the dataset generated can be used to refine pose estimation methods for hand-impaired populations.

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23.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

Context-aware Modality-Topology Co-Alignment for Multimodal Attributed Graphs

Authors:
Sirui Zhang↗Xu Wang↗Zhengyu Wu↗Xunkai Li↗Hongchao Qin↗

Multimodal Attributed Graphs (MAGs) model real-world entities by coupling graph topology with heterogeneous attributes such as text and images. They support graph-centric tasks requiring structural and class-discriminative representations, and modality-centric tasks requiring fine-grained cross-modal correspondence. However, existing MAG methods often rely on fixed graph contexts or uniformly fused representations, causing task-agnostic propagation and over-compressed fusion that hinder diverse task requirements and modality-specific evidence preservation. To address this, we propose CoMAG, a unified MAG backbone that learns task-adaptive reliable contexts and modality-preserving alignment within them. CoMAG first conducts Reliable Context Learning by estimating edge reliability from multimodal semantic consistency, complementing raw topology with semantic neighbors, and selecting context components through a task-aware gate. It then performs Modality-preserving Hop-token Alignment by maintaining modality-specific multi-hop trajectories, matching modality-hop tokens across modalities, and decoupling shared and private representations. Thus, CoMAG produces graph and modality representations from one forward pass while retaining modality-specific cues. We further analyze stable propagation, over-smoothing mitigation, and modality-collapse control. Experiments on nine OpenMAG datasets compare CoMAG with feature-only, graph-only, multimodal, and unified MAG baselines across graph-level prediction, modality matching, and graph-conditioned generation. Results show that CoMAG achieves the best reported performance, demonstrating that task-adaptive reliable contexts and modality-preserving alignment improve structural prediction, cross-modal matching, and graph-conditioned generation while retaining sparse edge-linear complexity.

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24.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24

Self-administered computerized cognitive training for cognitive deficits in individuals with metabolic syndrome: a randomized controlled trial

Authors:
Koutsonida↗Markozannes↗Kanellopoulou↗Tsiaras↗Varella↗Zilidou↗Romanopoulou↗Hyphantis↗Ntzani↗Aretouli↗Tsilidis↗

Background: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) has been associated with cognitive decline. Considering its increasing prevalence worldwide, the goal of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of a short-term, self-administered computerized cognitive training programme in individuals with metabolic syndrome and low cognitive performances. Methods: Thirty six participants, aged 40-72 years (mean age: 57.8 years), were randomly assigned to the cognitive training or the passive control group. The cognitive training component of Long Lasting Memories (LLM) Care was used as an interactive software to enhance participants' cognitive functions. Up to 24 sessions, each lasting 45 minutes, were self-administered at home twice per week for 3 months. Thorough cognitive assessments with were performed at baseline (randomization), at the end of intervention, and 12 months after baseline. The primary outcome was performance at nine neuropsychological tests, and the secondary outcome was a self-reported questionnaire assessing everyday functional abilities. Primary analyses were performed employing mixed-effect models using the intention-to-treat principle. Results: Low adherence was observed in the study, as only 9 participants (50%) completed at least 8 sessions of the cognitive training programme (range 9-24 sessions, median 15 sessions). No statistically significant effect of the cognitive training programme on performance in neuropsychological tests or everyday functioning was found. At the end of the 3-month intervention programme, effect for visual memory enhancement in immediate ({beta} = 1.58, 95% CI = -1.84 to 4.99, Cohen's d = 0.39) and delayed recall ({beta} = 2.17, 95% CI = -1.68 to 6.01, Cohen's d = 0.45) was moderate in favour of the intervention group, and at 12-month follow-up, semantic verbal fluency gains for the intervention group were detected ({beta} = 2.78, 95% CI = -0.92 to 6.49, Cohen's d = 0.70), though with wide confidence intervals. Conclusions: Despite some small effects observed in memory and verbal fluency, cognitive training did not yield statistically significant improvements. The observed low adherence and limited benefits on mild cognitive deficits in mostly middle-aged individuals with MetS are likely associated with the self-administered and short-term nature of the computerized intervention. This highlights the need for more intensive and clinician-delivered approaches to enhance engagement. Registry: ClinicalTrials.gov, TRN: NCT05658354, Registration date: 08 December 2022. Keywords: Metabolic syndrome, cognitive deficits, cognitive training, computerized, adults

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25.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-25

Surrogate models for Rock-Fluid Interaction: A Grid-Size-Invariant Approach

Authors:
Nathalie C. Pinheiro↗Donghu Guo↗Hannah P. Menke↗Aniket C. Joshi↗Claire E. Heaney↗Ahmed H. ElSheikh↗Christopher C. Pain↗

arXiv:2602.22188v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Modelling rock-fluid interaction requires solving a set of partial differential equations (PDEs) to predict the flow behaviour and the reactions of the fluid with the rock on the interfaces. Conventional high-fidelity numerical models require a high resolution to obtain reliable results, resulting in huge computational expense. This restricts the applicability of these models for multi-query problems, such as uncertainty quantification and optimisation, which require running numerous scenarios. As a cheaper alternative to high-fidelity models, this work develops eight surrogate models for predicting the fluid flow in porous media. Four of these are reduced-order models (ROM) based on one neural network for compression and another for prediction. The other four are single neural networks with the property of grid-size invariance; a term which we use to refer to image-to-image models that are capable of inferring on computational domains that are larger than those used during training. In addition to the novel grid-size-invariant framework for surrogate models, we compare the predictive performance of UNet and UNet++ architectures, and demonstrate that UNet++ outperforms UNet for surrogate models. Furthermore, we show that the grid-size-invariant approach is a reliable way to reduce memory consumption during training, resulting in good correlation between predicted and ground-truth values and outperforming the ROMs analysed. The application analysed is particularly challenging because fluid-induced rock dissolution results in a non-static solid field and, consequently, it cannot be used to help in adjustments of the future prediction.

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