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01.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

TeleMorpher: Toward Robust Simultaneous Motion-Location Editing

arXiv:2606.19676v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Diffusion models have achieved remarkable success in image and video generation and editing. While recent studies have extended these efforts toward motion editing, simultaneously transforming both motion and location-despite its practical importance-remains largely unexplored. To better understand robust motion-location editing, we first analyze the fundamental factors that degrade its quality. Based on this analysis, we propose TeleMorpher, one of the first one-shot frameworks to the best of our knowledge, for simultaneous motion-location editing. Our approach leverages motion priors, a target motion-centric video generated from an off-the-shelf model as motion-editing guidance, and the ground truth motion to enable more controllable and precise motion-location editing. Via this, our framework works as follows: (1) we first disentangle the protagonist and the background via pre-trained segmentation and inpainting models. (2) Then, we introduce a training-free pose warping that edits the protagonist's motion with the motion prior as the guidance. (3) The result of warped motion video is directly injected into a baseline motion editor during inference, mitigating the difference between source and target motions while preserving the appearance of the source video. (4) To enhance the reliability of quantitative evaluations, we propose two new LPIPS-based metrics that measure the background consistency before and after the motion editing and the fidelity of motion editing performance via measuring the difference between the extracted protagonist's skeletons from source and target videos. Experiments with in-the-wild videos and the TaiChi dataset demonstrate that TeleMorpher achieves superior performance across both quantitative and qualitative measurements (real-human evaluation), underscoring its effectiveness.

02.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-06-11

Robust discovery of mutational signatures using power posteriors

Authors:

by Catherine Xue, Jeffrey W. Miller, Scott L. Carter, Jonathan H. Huggins Mutational processes, such as the molecular effects of carcinogenic agents or defective DNA repair mechanisms, produce different mutation types with characteristic frequency profiles, known as mutational signatures. Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) has been successfully used to discover many mutational signatures, yielding novel insights into cancer etiology and informing targeted therapies. However, the NMF model is only a rough approximation to reality, and even small departures from this assumed model can have large negative effects on the accuracy and reliability of the results. We propose BayesPowerNMF, a Bayesian NMF method that provides nonparametric robustness to model misspecification, principled automated selection of the number of latent processes, and uncertainty quantification of model parameters. In extensive simulation studies, we find that our proposed approach recovers more true signatures with greater accuracy than current leading methods. On whole-genome sequencing data for six cancer types from the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium, we find that our method is able to accurately recover more signatures than the current state-of-the-art.

03.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Entanglement transition in unitary system-bath dynamics

arXiv:2512.06081v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The evolution of a system coupled to baths is commonly described by a master equation that, in the long-time limit, yields a steady-state density matrix. However, when the same evolution is unraveled into quantum trajectories, it is possible to observe a transition in the scaling of entanglement within the system as the system-bath coupling increases - a phenomenon that is invisible in the trajectory-averaged reduced density matrix of the system. Here, we go beyond the paradigm of trajectories from master equations and explore whether a qualitatively analogous entanglement-scaling transition emerges in a single unitary evolution of the combined system-bath setup, without monitoring the dynamics of the system. We investigate the scaling of entanglement in a unitary quantum setup composed of a two-dimensional lattice of free fermions, where each site is coupled to a fermionic bath. As the system-bath coupling increases, the logarithmic fermionic negativity reveals an entanglement transition from logarithmic-law to area-law scaling. This occurs while the system's steady-state properties are trivial, highlighting that the signatures of these different scalings are within the bath-bath correlations. Evidence of the transition is also found in the mutual information and the correlations of the full system-bath setup, suggesting that the entanglement transition is underpinned by a change in the spatial structure of quantum information.

04.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-18

On a class of reflected McKean-Vlasov Stochastic Differential Equations with jumps

arXiv:2606.18433v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper investigates a class of reflected McKean-Vlasov Stochastic Differential Equations driven by both Brownian motion and a compensated Poisson random measure. We establish the existence and uniqueness of solutions and provide moments estimates for the state processes.

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

A Perception vs. Distortion Perspective on Score-Based Generative Channel Estimation

arXiv:2606.16815v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Driven by their remarkable success in computer vision and inverse problem solving, score-based models are increasingly applied to wireless communications, where they show promise across a range of physical-layer tasks. However, despite this growing interest, the current literature often lacks a rigorous analysis of when score-matching offers a tangible advantage over traditional discriminative learning. This paper aims to address this gap through the use-case of channel estimation, a fundamental inverse problem in wireless systems. We present a theoretically grounded interpretation of score-based channel estimation through the lens of the perception-distortion tradeoff, identifying the conditions where score matching excels as well as its key limitations. In particular, by modeling downstream wireless tasks (e.g., capacity maximization) as functionals of the channel estimation process, we quantify the excess risk incurred by standard distortion-minimization approaches. Extensive numerical results show that under high predictive uncertainty, the large excess risk gap can be offset by score-based estimation, enabling near Bayesian-optimal precoding via the learned posterior, whereas in the low predictive uncertainty regime, discriminative distortion-minimization approaches are preferable due to lower complexity and more efficient use of model capacity.

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

Symbolic Informalization: Fluent, Productive, Multilingual

Authors:

Symbolic informalization enables a reliable conversion of formal mathematics to natural language. It has the potential to make machine-checked content human-readable without loss of precision. In a traditional proof system usage, symbolic informalization generalizes the limited mechanisms of syntactic sugar into the ordinary language of mathematics. In a setting where proofs are constructed by artificial intelligence and autoformalization, symbolic informalization can explain what precisely has been constructed. This paper outlines the project Informath, which aims to show how symbolic informalization can produce fluent text with a reasonable development effort and address multiple formal and natural languages. Informath is based on an interlingual architecture, where Dedukti works as a hub between different proof systems (Agda, Lean, Rocq) and Grammatical Framework (GF) takes care of linguistic correctness and variation in different natural languages.

07.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-24

Age of LLM: A Strategic 1v1 Benchmark for Reasoning, Diplomacy and Reliability of Large Language Models under Fog of War

Authors:

We introduce Age of LLM, a turn-based 1v1 benchmark in which two LLMs face off on a 13x7 grid to destroy the enemy base. Three stressors are deliberate: fog of war, full diplomacy (messages, ceasefires, ultimatums; uranium kept secret), and a reliability dimension where every turn must follow a strict JSON schema and an illegal action is silently discarded. The engine is private and each match uses a fresh random map seed and opponent, mitigating the data contamination that affects public benchmarks. Models receive a (near) rule-only prompt with no build-order advice (two tactical seed phrases were present during data collection; see Section 2.7). We benchmark 15 reasoning models across 54 matches and 5,258 actions. Findings: (1) the nuclear rush dominates (78% on the rules-coherent v0.11+ sub-corpus; 85% corpus-wide) with a sole-launcher signature that is largely mechanical under secret-simultaneous launch rules, not a cognitive deterrence failure; (2) military conquest is rare but faster (12.3 vs 18.9 turns); (3) diplomacy is prolific yet almost never consummated; (4) ~58% of illegal actions are fog/state errors, making the illegal-action rate a measure of belief-tracking; (5) – the least established, and the only one we label exploratory – a weak link associates reliability with winning. The corpus is small, unbalanced and not side-swapped, so the ranking is a preliminary descriptive view, not a contribution. Beyond ranking, the turn-by-turn traces of actions and messages make the corpus a lens on how LLMs reason under adversarial uncertainty – their belief-tracking, spontaneous deception, and per-model cognitive "personas" – which we frame as a future research direction. We release the replay format, an isometric viewer and all replays; engine source on request.

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

Goal-Autopilot: A Verifiable Anti-Fabrication Firewall for Unattended Long-Horizon Agents

Authors:

Long-horizon LLM agents are not trusted to run unattended: with no human watching, they confidently report success they never verified. We treat honesty – bounding what an agent may claim at termination – as a first-class metric for unattended autonomy, distinct from capability. We present Autopilot, an execution model that makes silent fabricated success structurally impossible rather than merely rarer. Autopilot externalizes all working state into a durable, gated finite-state machine that a scheduler advances one stateless tick at a time; a hard floor forbids any terminal "done" claim whose falsifiable gate did not actually execute and pass. We prove a No-False-Success theorem – under gate soundness, floor enforcement, and plan coverage, termination implies the goal holds – whose only trust points are empirically measurable, and show the worst case degrades to an honest stall, never a fabricated success. Because each tick rehydrates only the state machine, per-step context cost is constant in the horizon. Across a 3,150-cell paired corpus (70 tasks $\times$ 3 systems $\times$ 3 models $\times$ 5 seeds, including 50 SWE-bench Lite tasks across 11 OSS repos), Autopilot fabricates on 0.95% of cells [95% CI 0.38–1.62] while Reflexion and StateFlow baselines fabricate on 8.10% [6.48–9.81] and 25.05% [22.48–27.62] respectively. The headline contrast lives in the hard regime: on SWE-bench Lite, the firewall reduces fabrication from 33.7% (StateFlow) to 0.67%, a paired difference of $-33.07$ pp [95% CI $-36.53, -29.73$]. The mechanism is the gate, not the model: all ten Autopilot fabrications come from the strongest model, while two weaker mid-tier models never fabricate across 700 paired cells. The firewall trades coverage for honesty by design – an honest stall is recoverable; a confident wrong output shipped downstream is not.

09.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

More efficient Clifford+T synthesis for small-angle rotations and application to Trotterization

arXiv:2605.31544v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Clifford+T synthesis of rotation gates is an important routine in fault-tolerant quantum compilation. While Clifford+T synthesis is scalable, it has a high overhead of tens of T gates per rotation in practice, translating to high resource estimates for many fault-tolerant algorithms. However, these well-known results, including those using probabilistic mixtures [Quantum 7, 1208 (2023)], are independent of the rotation angle $\theta$, requiring $O(\log 1/\delta)$ T gates. We show that it is possible to do much better for small angles, reducing the T cost to $\tilde{O}(\theta^2/\delta)$, and returning to existing $O(\log1/\delta)$ results in the worst case. This is particularly important since many algorithms, such as Trotterization, are dominated by small-angle rotations. Further, we perform a detailed theoretical and numerical study of quasi-probabilities, which can further reduce the total T cost of large circuits by orders of magnitude with only a small overhead in sample complexity. We also develop a scheme based on quasi-probability mixtures of Clifford+T fallback channels. We derive new $\theta$-dependent formulas that can be used for resource estimation of fault-tolerant quantum algorithms. As an application of our results, we show that the gate cost of Trotterization circuits compiled to a Clifford+T gate set is constant in the small Trotter step size limit, and can be reduced by orders of magnitude even for large step sizes. The cost of fault-tolerant Trotterization for a variety of applications should be re-examined in light of these results. Our work dispels the widely-stated claim that Clifford+T rotation synthesis has a high cost independent of $\theta$, and further develops a scalable quasi-probability method for rotation synthesis. We also expect our results to bring forward useful early fault-tolerant quantum computing by reducing required magic state resources.

10.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

Clinically Aligned Geometry Constraints for Robust IVUS Vessel Boundary Segmentation

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) lumen and external elastic membrane (EEM) segmentation is important for quantitative coronary plaque burden assessment. Errors in lumen or EEM delineation directly propagate to plaque area, plaque burden and geometric measurements. However, standard methods prioritising overlap scores often suffer from boundary drift and topology errors, leading to inaccurate clinical measurements. We present GeoCat, a geometry-consistent network that processes 5-frame IVUS clips using dual Cartesian-polar encoders with cross-domain attention and temporal fusion. A differentiable geometry consistency loss directly supervises clinically relevant descriptors including diameters, orientations, and cross-sectional areas. The model is trained on 12,242 annotated frames from 146 patients acquired with two commercial IVUS systems. We evaluate performance using both segmentation accuracy and plaque-relevant clinical metrics, including Dice/IoU, boundary measures(95HD (mm), ASSD), topology violation rate, and clinical geometry errors (dmax/dmin, angles, and areas). On our dataset, GeoCat achieves a Dice of 0.93, reduces 95HD to 0.14 mm, and lowers topology violations to 1.0%. Importantly, it significantly improves geometric fidelity, yielding diameter errors of 0.13-0.16 mm and angular errors of ~8 degrees, supporting reliable plaque burden quantification.

11.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Erasure cost of a quantum process: A thermodynamic meaning of the dynamical min-entropy

arXiv:2506.05307v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The erasure of information is fundamentally an irreversible logical operation, carrying profound consequences for the energetics of computation and information processing. We investigate the thermodynamic costs associated with erasing (and preparing) quantum processes. Specifically, we analyze an arbitrary bipartite unitary gate acting on logical and ancillary input-output systems, where the ancillary input is always initialized in the ground state. We focus on the adversarial erasure cost of the reduced dynamics - that is, the minimal thermodynamic work cost to erase the logical output of the gate for any logical input, assuming full access to the ancilla but no access to any purifying reference of the logical input state. We determine that this adversarial erasure cost is directly proportional to the negative min-entropy of the reduced dynamics, thereby giving the dynamical min-entropy a clear operational meaning. The dynamical min-entropy can take positive and negative values, depending on the underlying quantum dynamics. The negative value of the erasure cost implies that the extraction of thermodynamic work is possible instead of its consumption during the process. A key foundation of this result is the quantum process decoupling theorem, which quantitatively relates the decoupling ability of a process with its min-entropy. This insight bridges thermodynamics, information theory, and the fundamental limits of quantum computation.

12.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-15

Limiting partition function for the Mallows model: a conjecture and partial evidence

Authors:

arXiv:2406.18855v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Let $S_n$ denote the set of permutations of $n$ labels. We consider a class of Gibbs probability models on $S_n$ that is a subfamily of the so-called Mallows model of random permutations. The Gibbs energy is given by a class of right invariant divergences on $S_n$ that includes common choices such as the Spearman foot rule and the Spearman rank correlation. Mukherjee in 2016 computed the limit of the (scaled) log partition function (i.e. normalizing factor) of such models as $n\rightarrow \infty$. Our objective is to compute the exact limit, as $n\rightarrow \infty$, without the log. We conjecture that this limit is given by the Fredholm determinant of an integral operator related to the so-called Schrödinger bridge probability distributions from optimal transport theory. We provide partial evidence for this conjecture, although the argument lacks a final error bound that is needed for it to become a complete proof.

13.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

Toward 360-Degree Indoor Panorama Editing via Tuning-Free Diffusion Model with Refocusing Cross-Attention

Zero-shot text-guided diffusion has significantly advanced image editing; however, its practical usability remains constrained by three persistent challenges: prompt brittleness that requires meticulous prompt engineering, spillover edits that unintentionally affect non-target regions, and failures on small or cluttered objects caused by limited fine-grained supervision in training data. We propose FocusDiff (Target-Aware Refocusing for Tuning-Free Diffusion Editing), a tuning-free framework for precise and region-specific image manipulation based on refocusing cross-attention. Given a target region obtained through automated segmentation or manual selection, FocusDiff applies selective blurring to non-edit areas to guide attention toward the masked region while accurately transferring the object's identity, structure, and appearance to the edited output. Integrated context-preserving modules further ensure background fidelity and global coherence, enabling accurate edits from simple text prompts in a single pass. We also extend FocusDiff to 360-degree indoor panorama editing and demonstrate its effectiveness within virtual reality environments. Extensive experiments on our localized editing benchmark LIMB, comprising 30 multi-object images and 100 annotated examples including challenging small-object cases, show that FocusDiff outperforms existing zero-shot editors in text-image alignment and background preservation, achieving superior precision, photorealism, and usability. The project page is available at https://vdkhoi20.github.io/FocusDiff.

14.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-19

On creating convexity in high dimensions

arXiv:2502.10382v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Given a subset $A$ of $\mathbb{R}^n$, we define \begin{align*} \mathrm{conv}_k(A) := \left\{ \lambda_1 s_1 + \cdots + \lambda_k s_k : \lambda_i \in [0,1], \sum_{i=1}^k \lambda_i = 1 , s_i \in A \right\} \end{align*} to be the set of vectors in $\mathbb{R}^n$ that can be written as a $k$-fold convex combination of vectors in $A$. Let $\gamma_n$ denote the standard Gaussian measure on $\mathbb{R}^n$. We show that for every $\varepsilon > 0$, there exists a subset $A$ of $\mathbb{R}^n$ with Gaussian measure $\gamma_n(A) \geq 1- \varepsilon$ such that for all $k = O_\varepsilon(\sqrt{\log \log(n)})$, $\mathrm{conv}_k(A)$ contains no convex set $K$ of Gaussian measure $\gamma_n(K) \geq \varepsilon$. This result acts as a complement to the recent affirmative resolution of Talagrand's convexity conjecture by Hua, Song, and Tudose, which states that a universal dilation of the threefold Minkowski sum $A+A+A$ of a large set $A$ guarantees a large convex subset. Our approach utilises concentration properties of random copulas and the application of optimal transport techniques to the empirical coordinate measures of vectors in high dimensions.

15.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Symmetry-Induced Relaxation Comb and Strong Quantum Mpemba Effect in Long-Range XXZ Spin Chains

arXiv:2605.20930v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Understanding how symmetry constrains dissipative relaxation in open quantum many-body systems remains a central challenge in nonequilibrium physics. Here we uncover a symmetry-filtered Liouvillian mechanism for fast relaxation in a long-range XXZ spin chain subject to dephasing noise. At the isotropic point, the Hamiltonian has global \(SU(2)\) symmetry, whereas the full Liouvillian retains only the \(U(1)\) symmetry associated with total magnetization. This interplay selects a family of spatially uniform \(U(1)\)-neutral eigenoperators with exact eigenvalues \(\lambda=-2q\). Highly symmetric initial states have spectral weight only on this family, so higher-order components decay rapidly and the \(\lambda=-2\) mode governs the long-time dynamics, producing universal \(D(t)\sim e^{-2t}\) relaxation independent of system size and interaction range. Breaking the Hamiltonian symmetry restores overlap with slow Liouvillian modes and strongly suppresses relaxation. This symmetry-filtered accessibility gives rise to a strong quantum Mpemba effect, where a state farther from the steady state relaxes faster than closer thermal states. Our results establish symmetry-filtered Liouvillian mode accessibility as a route to controlling nonequilibrium relaxation in open quantum systems.

16.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-25

Introducing corpora Hlava Cor and Hlava AD: Human Label Variation in Coreference and Discourse Relations

As previous research on annotator disagreement in discourse phenomena has shown, understanding text coherence varies considerably from one individual to another. To explore this phenomenon, we created two corpora with multiple annotations of Czech texts, accompanied by annotators' explanations of their choices. The first corpus consists of 1,024 contexts annotated in parallel by three annotators. It captures differences in the identification of coreference across various text types and grammatical-semantic categories, including pronouns, full noun phrases, and anaphoric adverbials. The second corpus comprises 512 contexts, annotated in parallel by five annotators, and focuses on identifying discourse relations in attributive and non-attributive constructions. Both corpora achieve a comparable inter-annotator agreement of approximately 60-65%. For coreference annotation, agreement tends to be lower in cases where automatic coreference resolution models disagree, suggesting that when the models disagree, the examples tend to be more difficult or ambiguous for human annotators to interpret. The annotators' comments, both for coreference and discourse relations, further reveal differences in interpretation, varying levels of confidence in text understanding, and individual reading strategies.

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

A Recipe for Long-Context Reasoning in Large Language Models via On-Policy Optimization and Distillation

Existing approaches to post-train models for long-context tasks face complementary limitations: (i) supervised fine-tuning (SFT) provides stable supervision but suffers from exposure bias; (ii) reinforcement learning methods such as Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) train on model-generated trajectories but struggle with long-horizon credit assignment and sparse rewards; and (iii) on-policy distillation (OPD) provides dense token-level guidance but does not directly optimize task rewards. We study these complementary strategies for long-context alignment and derive a recipe that combines GRPO with OPD-style teacher guidance: the student learns from its own rollouts using outcome-level rewards, while a stronger teacher provides dense token-level regularization in place of the standard reference policy. This is especially useful when process-level supervision is difficult to obtain. To support this study, we introduce LongBlocks, a synthetic multilingual dataset spanning multi-hop reasoning, contextual grounding, and long-form generation. Through controlled ablations, we isolate the roles of cold-start initialization, teacher anchoring, and data mixing, showing that our recipe yields a more stable and effective path to long-context reasoning than GRPO or OPD while preserving short-context capabilities.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Anomalous weak values in a generalized Mach-Zehnder interferometer extracted directly from intensity measurements

arXiv:2606.24798v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Weak values provide a powerful framework for characterizing quantum systems. Their experimental extraction conventionally relies on weak conditioned von Neumann measurements, involving weak interactions and meter states that increase experimental complexity and often limit measurement efficiency. Here we introduce a method to fully characterize path weak-values in a generalized Mach-Zehnder interferometer employing neither meter states nor weak interactions. We experimentally demonstrate the technique in matter-wave interferometry. We identify anomalous weak values and, equivalently, negative quasiprobability distributions, which reflect the nonclassical behavior of the quantum system. The approach relies uniquely on intensity measurements at the output ports of the interferometer combined with controlled relative phase shifts between the paths. The absence of meter states enables considerable simplification of the setup and shorter measurement times, while preserving full access to weak values with comparable or increased accuracy. The scheme is directly applicable to a broad class of experiments involving two-level quantum systems.

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

Mode-selective nonlinear interference for high-brightness and high-purity fiber-coupled SPDC sources

arXiv:2606.23836v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Single-mode-fiber-coupled spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) sources are a key resource for photonic quantum technologies, but in single-crystal geometries brightness, heralding efficiency, and spectral purity remain constrained by intrinsic trade-offs. Here, we show how nonlinear interference in a cascaded two-crystal type-II SPDC source can be used to engineer the modal structure of SPDC emission, improving the brightness–heralding-efficiency trade-off by more than one order of magnitude beyond the single-crystal limit. We further demonstrate two routes to near-unity spectral purity while retaining high brightness and/or heralding efficiency, even with standard periodically poled crystals, and study the additional advantages of aperiodic poling with Gaussian phase matching. Using a spectrally resolved Laguerre–Gauss modal decomposition, we show that these improvements arise from mode-selective interference of spatial-spectral SPDC modes within the nonlinear interferometer. We experimentally validate the model through sum-frequency-generation measurements of the spatial-spectral state.

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

MUFASA: A Multi-Layer Framework for Slot Attention

Unsupervised object-centric learning (OCL) decomposes visual scenes into distinct entities. Slot attention is a popular approach that represents individual objects as latent vectors, called slots. Current methods obtain these slot representations solely from the last layer of a pre-trained vision transformer (ViT), ignoring valuable, semantically rich information encoded across the other layers. To better utilize this latent semantic information, we introduce MUFASA, a lightweight plug-and-play framework for slot-attention-based approaches to unsupervised object segmentation. Our model computes slot attention across multiple feature layers of the ViT encoder, fully leveraging their semantic richness. We propose a fusion strategy to aggregate slots obtained on multiple layers into a unified object-centric representation. Integrating MUFASA into existing OCL methods improves their segmentation results across multiple datasets, setting a new state of the art while simultaneously improving training convergence with only minor inference overhead.

21.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-18

Trajectory inference of epithelial-centered neighborhood profiles reconstructs a pseudo-temporal continuum in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is characterized by complex lung architecture and spatially heterogeneous remodeling, which have hindered integrated analysis of cell-intrinsic activity and intercellular communication during disease progression. Here we profiled six IPF lung specimens comprising more than 630,000 cells using the Xenium 5k panel and developed an epithelial-centered neighborhood profiling framework based on the local cellular composition around each epithelial cell. This approach captured fibrosis-associated variation in epithelial niches without requiring predefined histological regions. Pseudo-temporal continuum inference of these profiles reconstructed a continuous axis that reflected the spatial progression of fibrotic remodeling from relatively preserved alveolar regions to fibrotic and airway-like remodeled regions. Within this spatial dataset, we mapped coordinated changes in epithelial states, local microenvironments, epithelial intracellular pathway activities, and directional interactions with neighboring cell types along the same axis. Our findings provide a spatial framework that generates testable hypotheses for progressive epithelial niche remodeling in IPF.

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

Can Agents Read the Room? Benchmarking Visual Social Intelligence in Multimodal Simulation

Social interaction depends on both language and visible social signals, such as facial expressions, posture, gaze, and emotional shifts. Yet existing social-agent benchmarks are largely text-based and rarely test whether multimodal agents can use visual cues to guide interaction. We introduce \textsc{\benchmarkname{}}, a benchmark evaluating visual social intelligence in multimodal social simulation. It contains 240 scenarios, 585 role instances, and 2,340 role-task instances, combining aligned textual-visual evidence, structured role profiles, and four role-level tasks: expression task, characteristic task, interaction regulation task, and interaction outcome task. Evaluating seven recent MLLMs under verbalized-vision and direct-vision reveals a clear gap between local role enactment and interaction management: role-specific expression and conflict handling are near saturation, whereas interaction regulation and visually grounded outcome achievement remain substantially more difficult. The code is released at https://github.com/JunsWan/AgentViSS, and the dataset is available at https://huggingface.co/datasets/JunsWan/AgentViSS.

23.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-09

Good recycling starts at home — and benefits the world

Authors: Unknown Author

New research supports the value of household-level waste separation. But policies must also carefully consider consumer behaviours to maximize the quality of material collected. New research supports the value of household-level waste separation. But policies must also carefully consider consumer behaviours to maximize the quality of material collected.

24.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Regarding Maternal Nutrition Counselling Among Frontline Health Workers in Udupi, Karnataka, India: A Sequential Explanatory Mixed-Methods Study

Background Indias maternal nutrition profile is undergoing a dual-direction shift, with persistent undernutrition coexisting alongside rising overweight and micronutrient deficiencies. Despite national efforts through Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the National Health Mission (NHM), maternal dietary diversity remains suboptimal in India. Frontline health workers (FLWs) play a central role in delivering nutrition counselling; however, gaps remain between knowledge and its translation into practice, highlighting the need to strengthen training, applied competencies, and health system support within primary care settings. Objective To assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) regarding maternal nutrition counselling among FLWs and to explore contextual factors influencing counselling delivery. Methods A sequential explanatory mixed-methods study was conducted in Udupi, Karnataka, India. In phase one, 46 FLWs- Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), Community Health Officers (CHO), and Primary Health Care Officers (PHCO) completed a validated Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis test, Spearman correlation, and exploratory multiple linear regression. In phase two, one focus group discussion with 21 participants was conducted and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results FLWs demonstrated moderate KAP scores (37.50 {+/-} 5.09), with lower scores observed in dietary diversity knowledge and counselling practices. CHOs and PHCOs had significantly higher knowledge (p < 0.001) and practice scores (p = 0.002) compared to ASHAs, while attitudes were similar across cadres. Knowledge was positively associated with practice ({rho} = 0.389, p = 0.008). Exploratory regression indicated that cadre and knowledge were associated with practice, while attitude was not statistically significant. Qualitative findings suggested that counselling was largely protocol-based and constrained by workload, limited counselling tools, economic barriers, and cultural food practices. Conclusion Despite positive attitudes towards maternal nutrition counselling, frontline health workers demonstrated gaps in knowledge and counselling practices. Mixed-methods findings suggest that counselling delivery is shaped by both provider competencies and health-system constraints, highlighting the need for implementation-focused strategies to strengthen maternal nutrition counselling in routine antenatal care.

25.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-23

Innate immunity associates with protection from pneumococcal colonisation, but colonisation does not confer capsule-independent protection

Nasopharyngeal colonisation with Streptococcus pneumoniae is a prerequisite for transmission and disease and represents an important immunising event. While colonisation induces serotype-specific immunity, the mechanisms underlying heterologous protection remain unclear. We developed a controlled human infection model using pneumococcal serotype 15B and investigated colonisation dynamics, immunogenicity, and cross-protection against subsequent heterologous challenge with serotype 6B. Fifty-four healthy adults were intranasally inoculated with 15B at escalating doses. Colonisation rates peaked at 31.4% with 8 x 10 CFU per naris, lower than those historically observed with 6B and 3 strains. Density was also lower than previously observed with other strains. In vitro assays demonstrated that 15B adhered more readily to epithelial cells than 6B, but was less efficiently internalised, potentially reducing attack rates and colonisation density. Colonisation with 15B induced capsular polysaccharide-specific serum IgG, but baseline humoral immune measures did not predict protection from acquisition. Prior colonisation with 15B did not reduce acquisition of 6B upon re-challenge. Analysis of nasal microbiopsy samples revealed distinct innate activation signatures. Resistance to colonisation was associated with elevated baseline MIP-1 and MIP-1{beta} responses upon in vitro stimulation, whereas carriage was associated with enhanced chemokine and IL-6 responses. Local innate immune activation, rather than circulating antibody responses alone, may therefore contribute to colonisation control. We demonstrate that experimental colonisation with 15B does not confer heterologous protection against 6B and highlight the importance of mucosal innate immune conditioning in serotype-independent defence. Strategies enhancing nasal innate immune recruitment and activation may be required for broader protection against pneumococcal colonisation.