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01.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

LatticeBridge: Rare-Event Sequential Inference for Faithful Structured Sequence Synthesis

Structured sequence generation often requires a model to satisfy several input-derived constraints in a single output. Standard decoding methods may assign high probability to fluent continuations while placing low mass on continuations that realize all required anchors jointly. We study this regime as a rare-event sequential inference problem. LatticeBridge combines a compact prefix language model, instance-compiled surface automata, and a twisted sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) decoder with resampling, multilevel splitting, and a source-support proposal term derived from instance-provided phrases. The constraint representation is compiled from each input instance and does not rely on manually curated lexical classes. On 2,610 attainable validation tasks spanning CommonGen, E2E NLG, and WikiBio, the particle decoder improves exact anchor satisfaction and mean anchor coverage over greedy, beam-filtered, and best-of-k ancestral baselines under a shared proposal model. Since exact anchor satisfaction alone does not rule out unsupported attribute substitutions, the evaluation reports required-anchor coverage, source coverage, source-intrusion diagnostics, overlap, runtime, and particle statistics jointly. The benchmark characterizes the faithfulness-overlap-latency frontier under a fixed proposal model.

02.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

NarrativeWorldBench: A Frontier-Saturated Benchmark and a Latent World Model for Long-Horizon Co-Creative Audio Drama

Long-form serialized audio drama, with arcs that run for 200 to 800 episodes, is a major creative medium and a setting where frontier large language models (LLMs) fail. We benchmark 21 models, spanning classical, fine-tuned, open-frontier, closed-frontier, and reasoning tiers, on a uniform set of structural narrative metrics. All closed-frontier systems saturate at a plot-beat F1 in the band [0.78, 0.81] and collapse by about -0.20 F1 at horizon h=200. We introduce NarrativeWorldBench, an open benchmark of nine narrative-structure metrics evaluated across horizons h in {10, 20, 50, 100, 200}, with cross-lingual evaluation across four Indic languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi). We introduce N-VSSM, a Narrative Variational State-Space Model that maintains a structured 256-dimensional latent world state over more than 200 episodes via a Mamba-2 backbone with an event-conditioned posterior and an 8B decoder. N-VSSM holds plot-beat F1 >= 0.84 across all horizons at 4x lower compute than the closed-frontier band. A learned Cultural Transfer Function lifts cross-language fidelity by +0.20 to +0.23 Likert points. In a within-subjects writer study (n = 12 professional authors, 240 trials), N-VSSM is preferred over Claude Opus 4.5 on long-arc consistency 71% of the time and rated +1.3 Likert points higher on controllability.

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

FlowState: Sampling-Rate-Equivariant Time-Series Forecasting

arXiv:2508.05287v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Existing time series foundation models (TSFMs), often based on transformer variants, lack adaptability to different sampling rates, struggle with generalization across varying context and target lengths, and are computationally inefficient. We introduce FlowState, a novel TSFM architecture that achieves sampling-rate-equivariant forecasting through a unified design that pairs a state space model (SSM) encoder with a functional basis decoder (FBD). This design enables continuous-time modeling and dynamic time-scale adjustment, allowing FlowState to inherently generalize across all possible temporal resolutions, and dynamically adjust the forecasting horizons without retraining. We further propose an efficient pretraining strategy that improves robustness and accelerates training. Despite being one of the smallest TSFMs, FlowState achieves state-of-the-art results on the widely used GIFT-Eval benchmark, while demonstrating superior adaptability to unseen sampling rates. Our detailed analyses confirm the effectiveness of its components, and we demonstrate its unique ability to adapt to varying input sampling rates.

04.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Data-driven Control with Real-time Uncertainty Compensation for Multi-Fuel Engines

arXiv:2606.16171v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multi-fuel compression ignition (CI) engines offer superior power density and fuel flexibility. However, achieving consistent and optimal combustion phasing across a wide range of operating conditions remains a major challenge, particularly in the presence of modeling uncertainties. This paper presents a novel, data-driven real-time uncertainty compensation framework for combustion control in multi-fuel CI engines. The proposed approach introduces a pseudo-engine speed that enables dynamic adaptation of control inputs in response to uncertainty affecting the engine. To model the underlying combustion process, a Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) model is first trained on available input-output data, capturing the nonlinear and fuel-dependent behavior across varying operating conditions. Control inputs are then synthesized through model inversion of the learned GPR surrogate and augmented with an uncertainty compensator designed to mitigate deviations caused by dynamic variations in operating conditions and model inaccuracies. This integrated control strategy allows for real-time input corrections within a finite number of combustion cycles. Theoretical analysis establishes finite-time convergence guarantees for the proposed controller. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method steers the combustion phasing to the desired value in real-time, providing a scalable and adaptive control solution for multi-fuel CI engine operation.

05.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-18

Cost-effectiveness of a virtual fracture clinic versus traditional in-person fracture clinic care for adults with acute simple fractures: a protocol for a health economic evaluation within the RECITAL trial

ABSTRACT Introduction Traditional in-person fracture clinics are often overcrowded and inconvenient for patients. Virtual fracture clinics aim to address some of these concerns by improving the efficiency of the orthopaedic service and reducing unnecessary interventions while maintaining safety and quality of care. The RECITAL trial is a non-inferiority randomised controlled trial comparing follow-up care provided at a virtual fracture clinic for people with acute simple fractures to follow-up care provided at an in-person fracture clinic. This study describes the protocol for an economic evaluation of RECITAL where the primary aim is to investigate the cost-effectiveness of a virtual fracture clinic compared with traditional in-person fracture clinic care from a health system perspective. Methods and analysis The RECITAL trial recruited 312 participants with acute simple fractures and randomised them to receive follow-up care provided at a virtual fracture clinic or follow-up care provided at an in-person fracture clinic. We will conduct a within-trial analysis from a health system perspective (primary analysis), as well as a health service, patient and societal perspective. The economic evaluation will estimate the difference in the cost of resource inputs on an intention to treat basis used by participants in the two arms of the trial, allowing comparisons to be made between the in-person and virtual fracture clinics. Data for intervention costs and healthcare utilisation will be collected from trial records, hospital electronic medical records and district performance units. The results of the economic evaluation will be expressed in terms of incremental cost per utility weight gained at 12 weeks and will be plotted on a cost-effectiveness plane. Bootstrapping by resampling will be used to estimate 95% confidence intervals around costs and outcomes, and to calculate the confidence intervals around the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio. A cost-effectiveness acceptability curve (CEAC) will be plotted, which will provide information about the probability that an intervention is cost-effective, given the level of a decision makers willingness to pay for each additional outcome. Ethics and Dissemination The trail was approved by the SLHD Ethics Review Committee (RPAH Zone) (X23-0200 and 2023/ETH01038). The findings will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed journal and conference presentations. Trial registration number The trial was prospectively registered on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR; 12623000934640)

06.
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.

07.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

ScaffoldAgent: Utility-Guided Dynamic Outline Optimization for Open-Ended Deep Research

arXiv:2606.20122v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Open-ended deep research (OEDR) requires systems to acquire knowledge through multi-round retrieval and generate coherent long-form reports. The outline plays a central role as a structural scaffold that coordinates retrieval, evidence organization, and generation. However, existing methods either fix the outline before writing or refine it with local heuristics, leading to scaffold drift under continuous information accumulation and delayed feedback for evaluating outline modifications. We propose ScaffoldAgent, a utility-guided dynamic outline optimization framework for OEDR. ScaffoldAgent models outline evolution as a structured decision process with three operations: Expansion, Contraction, and Revision, enabling controlled updates to the report scaffold. It further introduces a utility-guided feedback mechanism that estimates the downstream value of each outline operation from retrieval gain, structural coherence, and trial-generation quality. The resulting utility signal guides node selection, operation scheduling, and termination during inference. Experiments on DeepResearch Bench and DeepResearch Gym show that ScaffoldAgent consistently improves long-form report generation and factual grounding over existing deep research agents.

08.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

K-Forcing: Joint Next-K-Token Decoding via Push-Forward Language Modeling

Autoregressive (AR) language modeling is the dominant paradigm for text generation, yet its sequential token-by-token decoding makes inference memory-bound and inefficient. Existing acceleration approaches, such as speculative decoding and diffusion language models, can yield speedups under certain conditions but do not directly address high-load batch serving–the scenario most critical for industrial-scale deployment. We introduce K-Forcing, a push-forward language modeling paradigm for joint next-k-token decoding. K-Forcing distills an existing AR model into a conditional push-forward mapping–one that transforms independent uniform noise variables into a joint sample of multiple future tokens in a single forward pass. This design preserves fixed-length outputs, reuses the AR teacher backbone, and remains compatible with standard AR serving infrastructure. We train this mapping via progressive self-forcing distillation, which gradually expands the prediction window while enabling the student to closely match the sequence distribution of the AR teacher. We evaluate K-Forcing on LM1B and OpenWebText using a standard causal Transformer backbone. When aggressively configured to generate k = 4 tokens per forward pass, K-Forcing delivers approximately 2.4-3.5x speedup across different batch sizes, while incurring modest quality degradation relative to its AR teacher. As inference increasingly dominates the lifetime compute cost of modern LLMs, K-Forcing offers a promising route toward accelerating AR generation under real-world high-load deployment.

09.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-11

Foundation model-based tool for automated ulcerative colitis histology scoring demonstrates non-inferiority to pathologists across multiple scoring indices

In clinical trials for ulcerative colitis (UC), pathologists assess disease severity through standardized histological indices, including the Geboes Score, Robarts Histopathology Index (RHI), and Nancy Histologic Index (NHI). Despite strong associations with clinical outcomes, histologic scoring suffers from inter- and intra-reader variability, and consensus criteria for histologic remission remain uncertain. Through a consortium approach, we developed an artificial intelligence-based measurement (AIM) tool for scoring histology in UC mucosal biopsies (AIM-HI UC). This model, trained on a large dataset of UC biopsies (N=10,230), utilizes additive multiple instance learning models leveraging PLUTO, a pathology foundation model, that predict each of the Geboes subgrades, from which the Geboes grade-level score, RHI, and NHI can be calculated. Evaluation of this model on a standalone verification set including clinical trial specimens established algorithm non-inferiority and/or superiority relative to standard qualified pathologists through comparison of algorithm-consensus and pathologist-consensus agreement metrics (non-inferior if difference >-0.1, superior if difference >0, inclusive of confidence intervals). AIM-HI UC was determined to be non-inferior to pathologists (N=3) for the prediction of all seven Geboes subgrades, grade-level Geboes, RHI, NHI, histologic improvement (GS

10.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-18

Functional central limit theorems for non-local branching Markov processes

arXiv:2502.19382v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The aim of this paper is to study the fluctuations of a general class of supercritical branching Markov processes with non-local branching mechanisms. We establish functional central limit theorems and show that the limiting behaviour falls into three regimes, determined by the size of the spectral gap associated with the first-moment semigroup of the branching process. The main novelty is to develop a unified functional fluctuation theory for spatial branching Markov processes with non-local reproduction, allowing a general finite-dimensional spectral structure for the first-moment semigroup, including non-simple leading eigenvalues and nilpotent Jordan-type components. In doing so, we extend the classical small, critical and large fluctuation trichotomy beyond the finite-type and local spatial settings, and obtain limiting processes that capture the covariance structure induced by non-local offspring displacement.

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

The Almost Intelligent Revolution: Options for Scaling Up Deliberation and Empowering People with AI

Authors:

The increasing prominence of Large Language Models (LLMs) in public discourse presents both opportunities and challenges for democratic deliberation. While red teaming strategies help mitigate specific risks, broader concerns persist regarding linguistic constraints, biases, and the sycophantic tendencies of LLMs. This chapter explores how LLMs can be used to significantly scale up and democratise deliberation, particularly in fostering inclusivity and empowering traditionally marginalised groups. Drawing on concepts from Systemic-Functional Linguistics, the chapter examines how variations across language users (for example, with respect to socio-demographic groups) and across language use (for example, with respect to communicative functions) shape participation in AI-supported deliberation. The chapter presents AI-driven deliberation studies and assesses their potential to scaffold argumentation, enhance access, and reduce the influence of exclusionary linguistic norms and biases which are embedded in prestigious registers. At the same time, the chapter cautions against both overclaiming, which leads to unrealistic expectations, and underclaiming, which risks missed opportunities for AI-assisted engagement. The chapter concludes by identifying future research directions to maximise the democratic potential of AI-assisted participation while embedding ethical safeguards to counteract the reproduction of linguistic inequalities.

12.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

CottonLeafVision: An Explainable and Robust Deep Learning Framework for Cotton Leaf Disease Classification

Globally, cotton is a highly economically beneficial crop, as the textile industry heavily depends on it. So, the precise identification and detection of cotton leaf disease is crucial for economic stability. The development goal of "CottonLeafVision" is to accurately classify and detect cotton leaf disease. With this goal, we have evaluated multiple pretrained Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, including DenseNet201, InceptionV3, and VGG19 on a publicly available cotton leaf disease image dataset. This image dataset includes seven classes, six disease classes, and one healthy class, collected under various field conditions reflecting real-world challenges. Among these pretrained models, with DenseNet201, we have achieved the highest classification accuracy of 98%. To enhance the model reliability and interpretability, we have implemented different techniques and methods such as Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM), occlusion sensitivity analysis and adversarial training to increase the noise resistance of the model. Finally, we have developed a prototype in order to utilize the model's capabilities on real life agriculture. This paper shows the deep learning model's capabilities to classify the disease in real-life cotton disease management situations.

13.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Contaminated Collaboration: Measuring Gender Bias Transfer in LLM-Assisted Student Writing

Gender bias in LLMs has been studied extensively in model outputs, with biased prompts shown to amplify stereotyped generations. Whether such bias propagates into text produced by humans who use these systems, however, remains underexplored. We investigate whether gender bias in an LLM writing assistant transfers into career plan essays written by students. We first verify that a gender-biased prompt induces gender-differentiated language in LLM-generated essays, while a neutral prompt does not. We then recruited participants (N = 123) in a controlled environment to write career plan essays for paired biographical profiles differing only in gender under three conditions: no AI assistance, neutral LLM assistance, or gender-biased LLM assistance. Students in the biased condition produced essays with a significantly larger agentic gap and more gender-stereotypic occupation suggestions than those in the control and neutral conditions. Our results also reveal that this bias transfer is asymmetric: agency is suppressed in female-target essays while male-target writing remains largely unaffected. Our findings highlight the risk of bias propagation in AI-assisted writing, calling for fairness-aware design in educational AI tools.

14.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-12

Unraveling Syntax: Language Modeling and the Substructure of Grammars

While language models achieve impressive results, their learning dynamics are far from understood. Many domains of interest – such as natural language syntax, coding languages, arithmetic – are captured by context-free grammars (CFGs). In this work, we extend prior work on neural language modeling of CFGs in a novel direction: how language modeling behaves with respect to CFG substructure, namely subgrammars. We define subgrammars, and prove a set of fundamental theorems connecting language modeling and subgrammars. We show that language modeling loss recurses linearly over its top-level subgrammars; applied recursively, the loss decomposes into losses for "irreducible" subgrammars. Under additional assumptions, and empirically, parametrized models learn subgrammars in parallel, unlike children who first master simple substructures. We find that subgrammar pretraining can improve final performance, but only for tiny models relative to the grammar, while alignment analyses show that pretraining consistently leads to internal representations that better reflect the grammar's substructure.

15.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-16

The Winner Takes It All

arXiv:2606.16885v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The winner-takes-all (WTA) process takes place on an arbitrary graph. There is an agent on each vertex of the graph, and active agents at neighboring vertices play games. In each game, a randomly chosen agent wins, while the loser is eliminated from subsequent games. The games are played at random times; each game finishes instantaneously, and the games cease when each active agent has only losers among its neighbors. On the one-dimensional lattice, the fraction of winners in the final state is $e^{-1}$, and we also determine the fractions $w_j$ of winners who won $j=0, 1, 2$ games. For the WTA process on a segment, we determine statistics of the total number of winners (the average, the variance, and all higher cumulants), the probabilities of reaching the final state with the minimum or maximum number of winners, and establish the behavior near the boundaries. For infinite regular trees with vertices of degree $d$, i.e., Bethe lattices with coordination number $d$, the fraction of winners is $(2/d)^{d/(d-2)}$.

16.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Robust Generation of Topological Biphoton Mode via Adiabatic Passage

arXiv:2606.19786v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Topological waveguide arrays support robust mode propagation in the presence of fabrication imperfections, providing a significant advantage for on-chip quantum information processing. However, this robustness does not fully extend to nonlinear biphoton generation. Structural disorder can enhance the excitation of non-topological biphoton modes during nonlinear interactions, which degrades the quantum properties of the generated state. To overcome this limitation, we propose an adiabatic passage that connects an isolated site to a topological defect array. By initiating the nonlinear process in a strongly isolated regime, nonlinear coupling to unwanted modes is effectively suppressed, thereby preserving the Schmidt number of the generated state. The subsequent adiabatic connection facilitates the high fidelity transfer of the generated biphoton into the topological biphoton mode. Our numerical simulations demonstrate that, unlike conventional topological structures, the adiabatic scheme maintains both high biphoton fidelity and a unit Schmidt number in the presence of waveguide gap disorder. Furthermore, we show that this robustness extends to path entangled NOON states, achieving a near-unity quantum interference visibility. Our approach provides a practical design strategy for disorder-tolerant integrated quantum photonic devices.

17.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Simulation-Based Multi-Fillet Evaluation of Woody Breast Poultry Fillets

Woody breast (WB) is a myopathy in modern broiler chickens that causes the breast muscle to become unusually stiff and fibrous, leading to decreased meat quality and significant economic losses. State-of-the-art automated WB detection relies on a side-view imaging system to analyze the bending behavior of a single fillet as it falls off a conveyor belt. While highly accurate, this approach is constrained by its single-fillet field of view, creating throughput bottlenecks on commercial processing lines. In this paper, we address this limitation via a novel multi-fillet detection architecture utilizing a top-down camera configuration. To validate our approach, we first develop a high-fidelity digital twin of an industrial conveyor system. Next, we synthesize a diverse dataset of 3D fillet meshes and model their viscoelastic bending dynamics using a physics-based simulation engine. Lastly, a continuous 2D shape deformation score is extracted from the top-down perspective as the simulated fillets traverse the roller precipice. Experimental results demonstrate that the top-down shape score effectively captures the contour changes of the fillets as it bends, providing a robust and scalable alternative to a side-view imaging system for simultaneous multi-fillet WB evaluation.

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

Can Machine Learning Forecast Rice Yields in Data-Constrained Settings? Satellite Climate Data, National Crop Statistics, and Lessons from Sierra Leone

arXiv:2606.13959v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sierra Leone's agriculture operates with almost no data-driven decision support, and no published machine learning study has examined the country's crop yields. We ask whether rice yield can be forecast from data Sierra Leone currently has. Using 25 years of FAOSTAT production data (2000-2024) for nine major crops, we train XGBoost, Gradient Boosting, and Random Forest under a strict anti-leakage protocol with expanding-window walk-forward evaluation across seven held-out years, benchmarked against naive persistence. No model trained on crop statistics alone outperforms persistence. Augmenting with free satellite climate data (CHIRPS rainfall, NASA POWER temperature) reverses this result: a climate-only XGBoost reduces forecast error by one third (RMSE 284 vs 428 kg/ha), a gain that holds for a linear model and is robust to excluding the anomalous 2018 season. Early-season (May-June) rainfall is the dominant predictor, implying seasonal yield risk is observable months before harvest. No model anticipated the 2018 collapse, whose origins were institutional rather than climatic. We translate the findings into policy recommendations for Sierra Leone's Feed Salone Strategy, with a fully open-source pipeline.

20.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-15

Hybrid Classical-Quantum Variational Autoencoder for Neural Topic Modeling

Authors:

Neural topic models enable scalable semantic discovery, but their integration with quantum hardware remains largely unexplored. We present a proof-of-concept hybrid classical-quantum variational autoencoder (VAE) for topic modeling, embedding parameterized quantum circuits within the VAE inference network while retaining a classical topic-word decoder. To address the resource constraints of quantum hardware, we propose a modified Gaussian Softmax posterior that decouples latent space dimensionality from the number of topics to be extracted, enabling the model to operate with a low-resource 10-qubit quantum device. On the AgNews dataset, the hybrid VAE outperforms state-of-the-art neural topic models (NTMs), reaching a $C_v$ coherence score of 0.71 and an NPMI score of 0.20 while preserving high topic diversity. For comparison, we also construct a fully classical variant, which also outperforms state-of-the-art models on AgNews and exhibits clear class separation in the latent space. These results demonstrate that hybrid VAEs are computationally viable even on NISQ-era devices and represent a promising direction for quantum-enhanced topic modeling.

21.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

International Consensus Guideline on Management of Genitourinary Adverse Events Associated with Prostate Cancer Radiotherapy

Purpose/Objective: Genitourinary (GU) adverse events (AEs) are common during and after pelvic radiation therapy (RT) for prostate cancer and can substantially impact quality of life. We convened an international committee to establish consensus in the prevention, mitigation, and management of radiation-related acute and late GU AEs, as there are no relevant evidence-based consensus guidelines to inform treating providers. Materials/Methods: A systematic evidence review focused on mitigation and management of radiation-related acute and late GU AEs was performed in PubMed, Embase and Cochrane. The following topics were addressed: management of acute GU AEs in the intact and post-operative settings; RT techniques; bladder outlet obstruction procedures; and indications for urology referral or hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO). Evidence-based consensus recommendations were developed using a Delphi process. We highlight the current state of evidence and evidence gaps worthy of future study. Results: Consensus was reached for 31 key questions. For management of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), most evidence comes from trials in patients without cancer and not undergoing RT. A consensus algorithm for medical management of acute GU AEs was developed with the following highlights: (a) alpha blockers as 1st-line for obstructive symptoms in the intact setting, (b) anti-spasmodics as 1st -line for irritative symptoms in the intact setting, and (c) anti-spasmodics as 1st -line in the post-operative setting. The consensus algorithm provides an ordered list of medications to offer if 1st -line options afford inadequate relief. For RT fractionation, randomized clinical trial (RCT) data are available. 40% of panelists rarely or never use standard fractionation over moderate hypofractionation for patients with baseline LUTS, but most consider moderate hypofractionation over SBRT for AUA IPSS > 15. For patients with severe obstructive LUTS (most commonly AUA IPSS >20), the panel recommends a prophylactic bladder outlet obstruction procedure and, if obstructive symptoms improve, consideration of moderate hypofractionation or SBRT, based on retrospective data. There is one RCT supporting use of HBO for late radiation cystitis. Conclusions: The consensus guideline synthesizes available evidence and expert opinion across key clinical decision points to provide practical guidance in the prevention, mitigation, and management of radiation-related acute and late GU AEs in prostate cancer RT. Envisioned as a living document with periodic updates, this guideline serves as a resource for practicing radiation oncologists by outlining expert-derived consensus recommendations of evidence-based care in areas where high-quality data is limited.

22.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Scaling LLM Reasoning from Minimal Labels: A Semi-Supervised Framework with a Lightweight Verifier

For the development of Large language models (LLMs), recent approaches to generating pseudo intermediate reasoning have shown remarkable progress. But they typically rely on large numbers of correctly annotated answers to assess reasoning quality. This paper presents a semi-supervised framework that scales reasoning learning from minimal supervision, turning reasoning verification itself into a data creation mechanism. We train a lightweight reasoning-correctness classifier on only a few labeled samples, which judges whether intermediate reasoning traces generated by an LLM are valid. Furthermore, an entropy-based confidence threshold filters out unreliable samples, and the remaining high-confidence reasoning traces are used to fine-tune the model. Experiments on Verifiable Math Problems (Orca-Math subset) and Question Answering on Image Scene Graphs (GQA) with Visual Programming show that our method achieves accuracy comparable to using 10-15x more labeled data. Ablation analyses confirm that both the classifier and entropy filtering are essential for scalable and noise-resistant pseudo-labeling. By replacing expensive answer-level supervision with lightweight reasoning verification, our method provides a practical path toward constructing large-scale reasoning resources and paves the way for future autonomous reasoning systems that learn from minimal human input.

23.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Trust-Region Diffusion Policies for Massively Parallel On-Policy RL

arXiv:2606.15260v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning with massively parallel simulations has become a standard framework for developing robust, deployable policies; however, most existing approaches still rely on simple Gaussian policy parameterizations. Diffusion models provide a more expressive policy class and have shown strong performance on challenging control problems, yet most diffusion-based RL methods are designed for offline or off-policy training. In this work, we ask whether diffusion policies can be trained effectively in the massively parallel, on-policy regime. To this end, we introduce Trust-region Diffusion Policies (TruDi), which enables diffusion policies for on-policy RL with massively parallel simulations. This setting is particularly challenging because the data distribution changes quickly across updates, making stable training with complex policies difficult. TruDi addresses this by integrating a trust-region optimization rule to enforce a KL-divergence constraint over the entire diffusion trajectory. Empirically, we evaluate TruDi on a diverse set of 4 massively parallel RL benchmarks comprising a total of 73 tasks. Across these tasks, TruDi consistently outperforms or is on-par with strong baselines on standard tasks and achieves clear gains on more challenging humanoid control tasks, establishing a strong new baseline for massively parallel on-policy RL.

24.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Thermodynamic Value of XOR-Game-Induced Side Information in a Szilard Engine

arXiv:2605.12044v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce a Szilard-type thermodynamic valuation of side-information channels induced by Bell-type correlations. In each round, a two-level working system is thermalized with a degenerate Hamiltonian, so that its physical microstate is a uniform classical bit. A trusted referee embeds this bit into a finite two-player XOR game, and a correlation resource produces a compressed controller bit. The controller uses only this compressed bit as side information for feedback. The construction is formulated first for arbitrary finite XOR games. The referee encoding makes the game-winning event equivalent to correct prediction of the physical microstate. Consequently, the induced side-information channel is binary symmetric, with success probability equal to the XOR-game winning probability of the supplied behaviour. The reversible Szilard feedback value is therefore fixed by the mutual information between the microstate and the controller record. Optimizing over local, quantum, and nonsignalling behaviour sets turns the corresponding game values into local, quantum, and nonsignalling thermodynamic ceilings. The construction is an effective-channel valuation, not a claim that Bell nonlocality is thermodynamic fuel. The controller receives only the compressed prediction bit, not the auxiliary variables that define the game. The thermodynamic costs of the referee, the correlation resource, and the preprocessing are not included. When controller-memory reset is included in a full cycle, the net work is non-positive, consistently with the second law.

25.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-19

A soluble bi-specific fusion protein for the improved expansion of human CD8+ CAR-T cells

The success of Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is heavily dependent on the quality of the final cellular product. Current expansion protocols often rely on reagents that require removal from cell culture media, posing logistical challenges in manufacturing, and can also lead to terminal differentiation. Here, we evaluate the use of a soluble, bead-free T cell activator, T cell expansion protein (T-CEP), as a streamlined alternative for generating potent CAR-T cells. Human T cells were activated with T-CEP or known T cell activators (Dynabeads and TransAct) and transduced with either CD19 or interleukin-13 (IL-13) mutein (tetravariant-13; TV-13)-based CAR lentiviral vectors. Our results demonstrate that T-CEP supports robust CAR-T cell expansion and achieves transduction efficiencies comparable to commercial reagents for both types of CAR-T cells. Notably, T-CEP significantly favored the expansion of CD8+ T cells, yielding an enhanced CD27+ phenotype and a lower CD4:CD8 ratio compared to TransAct. Cytotoxicity assays confirmed that T-CEP-expanded CAR-T cells possess cytolytic function equivalent to commercial reagents for both CARs, while exhibiting lower levels of inflammatory cytokine secretion. In summary, T-CEP represents a competitive alternative to existing expansion agents, as it does not require its removal during CAR-T manufacturing and generates a CD8+ dominant, less-differentiated phenotype without compromising efficacy.