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01.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Analytical solution of the Schr\"{o}dinger equation with $1/r^3$ and attractive $1/r^2$ potentials: Universal three-body parameter of mixed-dimensional Efimov states

arXiv:2601.19517v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We study the Schr\"{o}dinger equation with $1/r^3$ and attractive $1/r^2$ potentials. Using the quantum defect theory, we obtain analytical solutions for both repulsive and attractive $1/r^3$ interactions. The obtained discrete-scale-invariant energies and wave functions, validated by excellent agreement with numerical results, provide a natural framework for describing the universality of Efimov states in mixed dimension. Specifically, we consider a three-body system consisting of two heavy particles with large dipole moments confined to a quasi-one-dimensional geometry and resonantly interacting with an unconfined light particle. With the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, this system is effectively reduced to the Schr\"{o}dinger equation with $1/r^3$ and $1/r^2$ potentials, and manifests the Efimov effect. Our analytical solution suggests that, for repulsive dipole interactions, the three-body parameter of the mixed-dimensional Efimov states is universally set by the dipolar length scale, whereas for attractive interactions it explicitly depends on the short-range phase. We also investigate the effects of finite transverse confinement and find that our analytical results are useful for describing the Efimov states composed of two polar molecules and a light atom.

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

An Open-Source Monitoring Framework for Data Exploration and Progress Tracking in Multi-Center Radiology Studies

Multi-center studies are crucial for advancing medical and radiological research. Data exploration, collaboration discovery, and study progress monitoring are essential for maximizing their potential. However, in practice these processes often rely on manual communication and shared tables, which quickly become outdated and hinder efficient coordination in large distributed studies. This highlights the need for dedicated monitoring solutions that provide transparent and up-to-date insights into study progress. We propose a lightweight, open-source monitoring architecture for multi-center studies based on the widely used Grafana-Prometheus stack. The framework collects aggregated monitoring metrics from distributed study sites and visualizes them through configurable dashboards. As a real-world deployment example, the framework is integrated into the medical imaging platform Kaapana and evaluated within a large multi-center research network. By deploying our solution within the Germany-wide RACOON consortium, we demonstrate its ability to enable privacy-preserving data exploration and study progress monitoring across all 38 German university clinics. The monitoring framework supports transparent coordination of distributed research activities and can facilitate more efficient management of large-scale multi-center studies. The source code and Kaapana integration are publicly available at https://github.com/MIC-DKFZ/study-monitoring-kaapana.

03.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-19

Granularity-Regulated Adaptive Computational Efficiency for Optimal Verification in Test-Time Scaling

Test-time scaling (TTS) has emerged as a powerful paradigm for improving the reasoning performance of large language models (LLMs) by investing additional compute at inference time. A central component of TTS is the verifier, which selects or scores candidate solutions to guide the search process. While prior work has explored the benefit of verification, a fundamental question remains underexplored: what is the optimal granularity of verification under a given compute budget? Coarse-grained outcome reward models (ORMs) and fine-grained process reward models (PRMs) represent two extremes, yet neither alone achieves compute-optimality across all regimes. In this paper, we establish a unified theoretical framework, called GRACE (\underline{G}ranularity-\underline{R}egulated \underline{A}daptive \underline{C}omputational \underline{E}fficiency), that characterizes the optimal verification granularity as an explicit function of problem difficulty, verifier accuracy, and compute budget. We prove that there exists a phase transition: fine-grained verification dominates when either the compute budget is large or the problem is hard, whereas coarse-grained verification is preferred in the low-budget, easy-problem regime. Our theory unifies Best-of-$N$, beam search, and step-level MCTS within a single Pareto-optimality framework, and motivates an adaptive granularity strategy that provably achieves the compute-performance Pareto frontier. Empirical results on MATH-500, GSM8K, and AIME benchmarks corroborate all four theoretical claims, with our adaptive strategy outperforming fixed-granularity baselines by up to 3.1\% accuracy at matched compute.

05.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-25

Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Interpretable Keystroke Biomarkers in Parkinson's Disease

Authors:

arXiv:2606.25270v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Keystroke dynamics have been explored extensively as a passive digital biomarker for Parkinson's disease (PD), typically by extracting summary statistics from typing timing and training a classifier to discriminate PD from healthy controls. We instead apply inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) to keystroke data, modeling each keystroke as a discrete choice over typing speed and recovering, per subject, an interpretable reward function that explains their observed timing behavior. To our knowledge this is the first application of IRL to keystroke dynamics. On the public neuroQWERTY MIT-CSXPD dataset (85 subjects, 42 with PD), an initial four-parameter reward decomposition (speed, effort, smoothness, hand-alternation cost) was found to suffer severe feature collinearity between two terms ($r=1.000$ in typical contexts); we diagnose and correct this, yielding an identifiable three-parameter model. The recovered speed-preference weight correlates with UPDRS-III severity at $r=-0.607$ ($p

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

Contrast-Informed Augmentation and Domain-Adversarial Training for Adult-to-Neonatal MR Reconstruction Generalization

Purpose: To investigate whether contrast-informed data augmentation and domain-adversarial training improve the adult-to-neonatal generalization of the E2E-VarNet. Methods: Three training regimes were investigated: (1) adult-only training with unaugmented adult data, (2) mixed training with paired unaugmented and neonatal-informed augmented adult data, and (3) mixed training with a domain-adversarial objective. Models were trained on retrospectively undersampled multi-coil adult T2-weighted brain MR data and evaluated on neonatal and adult test data at acceleration factors $R=4$ and $R=8$ using quantitative metrics and qualitative evaluation. Feature analyses assessed whether domain-adversarial training altered the latent representations of unaugmented adult, augmented adult, and neonatal test samples. Results: Mixed training (Mixed) and mixed domain-adversarial training (Mixed-DAT) outperformed unaugmented adult-only training (Unaug-Only) when evaluated on neonatal data. At R=4, Mixed-DAT achieved the best performance (SSIM = 0.924 +/- 0.027, PSNR = 33.98 +/- 1.15 dB). At R=8, Mixed-DAT performed best when measured using SSIM (0.848 +/- 0.031 vs. 0.766 +/- 0.037 for Unaug-Only and 0.814 +/- 0.035 for Mixed) and Mixed performed best when measured using PSNR (29.56 +/- 0.83 dB vs. 26.26 +/- 0.78 dB for Unaug-Only and 29.43 +/- 0.83 dB for Mixed-DAT). Qualitative assessment of t-SNE plots suggested that Mixed-DAT increased the overlap among the latent representations of the unaugmented adult, augmented adult, and neonatal test data. Conclusion: Contrast-informed augmentation and domain-adversarial training improved adult-to-neonatal generalization of deep learning-based MR reconstruction. These findings suggest that contrast-informed data augmentation combined with adversarial training may improve robustness to domain shift in undersampled neonatal MR reconstruction.

07.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

Generalizing GNNs with Tokenized Mixture of Experts

arXiv:2602.09258v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Deployed graph neural networks (GNNs) are frozen at deployment yet must fit clean data, generalize under distribution shifts, and remain stable to perturbations. We show that static inference induces a fundamental tradeoff: improving stability requires reducing reliance on shift-sensitive features, leaving an irreducible worst-case generalization floor. Instance-conditional routing can break this ceiling, but is fragile because shifts can mislead routing and perturbations can make routing fluctuate. We capture these effects via two decompositions separating coverage vs selection, and base sensitivity vs fluctuation amplification. Based on these insights, we propose STEM-GNN, a pretrain-then-finetune framework with a mixture-of-experts encoder for diverse computation paths, a vector-quantized token interface to stabilize encoder-to-head signals, and a Lipschitz-regularized head to bound output amplification. Across nine node, link, and graph benchmarks, STEM-GNN achieves a stronger three-way balance, improving robustness to degree/homophily shifts and to feature/edge corruptions while remaining competitive on clean graphs.

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

Size Doesn't Matter: Cosine-Scored Sparse Autoencoders

arXiv:2606.15054v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) detect features via inner product, so a feature's activation scales with both its directional alignment and the input's norm. Under BatchTopK, high-norm tokens inflate all pre-activations simultaneously, claiming dictionary slots regardless of content alignment. This matters because sublayer normalization has already discarded the magnitude the score measures, so the encoder detects a quantity the model does not read. We replace the score with a learned blend of cosine similarity and input magnitude, letting the optimizer choose how much norm to use; a per-feature extension lets each feature decide independently. In both regimes, training is free to recover inner product but never does, with no feature ever choosing more than half-magnitude dependence. At matched reconstruction, the cosine encoder learns features that align with human-recognizable concepts far more often than standard, filling dictionary slots that inner product wastes on norm detectors. Loss reweighting that equalizes gradients barely closes the gap, confirming forward-pass score geometry as the lever. The advantage is not universal across tasks or depths, but we believe cosine scoring should be the default for dictionary learning on normalized representations.

09.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-06-09

Multi-stable oscillations in cortical networks with two classes of inhibition

by Arnab Dey Sarkar, Bard Ermentrout In the classical view of cortical rhythms, interactions between excitatory pyramidal neurons (E) and inhibitory parvalbumin-expressing interneurons (I) are sufficient to generate gamma- and beta-band oscillations. However, it is now well established that multiple inhibitory interneuron subtypes exist and that they play important roles in the generation and modulation of these rhythms. In this paper, we develop a spiking network model consisting of populations of E, I, and an additional interneuron type, somatostatin-expressing neurons (S), which receive excitation from the E cells and inhibit both the E and I populations. The S cells are further modulated by a third inhibitory subtype, vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) neurons, which receive inputs from other cortical areas. We reduce the spiking network to a system of nine differential equations that describe the mean membrane potential, firing rate, and synaptic conductance for each population. Using this reduced model, we identify a wide range of parameters that exhibit multiple coexisting rhythms. Employing tools from nonlinear dynamics, we then explore the roles of the two classes of inhibition, as well as VIP modulation, in shaping the properties of these rhythms.

10.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

GarmentSketch: Large-scale Sketch-to-Fashion Benchmark

Fashion sketching is a cornerstone of design workflows, allowing rapid visualization of creative concepts prior to physical prototyping. Yet, progress in sketch-based fashion image synthesis has been hindered by the absence of large-scale, high-quality paired resources. To bridge this gap, we present GarmentSketch, a novel dataset comprising 26,249 fashion sketches across 21 garment categories, each paired with detailed textual descriptions. Captions were produced through a multi-stage pipeline that integrates multiple multimodal large language models (MLLMs) with human-in-the-loop refinement, ensuring both semantic accuracy and descriptive richness. We benchmark GarmentSketch on state-of-the-art generative models, providing baseline performance for sketch-guided text-to-image generation. Our experiments reveal both the promise and the current limitations of existing methods. By offering a comprehensive and richly annotated resource, GarmentSketch establishes a foundation for advancing sketch understanding, fine-grained fashion image generation, and creative human-AI collaboration in design. The dataset will be available at: https://khangbdd.github.io/garmentsketch.

11.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

KeepLoRA++: Continual Learning with Layer-Scaled Residual Gradient Adaptation

Continual learning for pre-trained vision-language models requires balancing three competing objectives: retaining pre-trained knowledge, preserving knowledge from a sequence of learned tasks, and maintaining the plasticity to acquire new knowledge. This paper presents KeepLoRA++, balancing these objectives through a unified dual-dimensional knowledge retention mechanism. We analyze knowledge distribution of Transformer architecture from both inter-layer and intra-layer perspectives. The inter-layer perspective examines how retention is distributed across layers, while the intra-layer perspective focuses on the parameter space within each layer. Our analysis reveals a structural property: general transferable knowledge is mainly encoded in the shallow layers and the principal subspace of the parameters, while task-specific adaptations are localized in the deep layers and the residual subspace. Motivated by this insight, KeepLoRA++ introduces a layer-scaled residual gradient adaptation method. New tasks are learned by restricting LoRA parameter updates to the residual subspace, combined with a shallow-to-deep layer scaling, to prevent interference with previously acquired capabilities. Specifically, the gradient of a new task is projected onto a subspace orthogonal to both the principal subspace of the pre-trained model and the dominant directions of previous task features, while simultaneously assigning smaller update magnitudes to shallow layers and larger ones to deeper layers. Our theoretical analysis and empirical evaluations confirm that KeepLoRA++ successfully balances these three competing objectives, consistently outperforming representative baselines across image classification, visual question answering, and video understanding tasks.

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

DAL: A Practical Prior-Free Black-Box Framework for Piecewise Stationary Bandits

arXiv:2501.19401v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce a practical, black-box framework termed Detection Augmented Learning (DAL) for the problem of piecewise stationary bandits without knowledge of the underlying non-stationarity. DAL accepts any stationary bandit algorithm with order-optimal regret as input and augments it with a change detector, enabling applicability to all common bandit variants. Extensive experimentation demonstrates that DAL consistently surpasses all state-of-the-art methods across diverse non-stationary scenarios, including synthetic benchmarks and real-world datasets, underscoring its versatility and scalability. We provide theoretical insights into DAL's strong empirical performance, complemented by thorough empirical validation.

13.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

Broadcast Product: Redefining Shape-aligned Element-wise Multiplication and Beyond

arXiv:2409.17502v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Broadcast operations are widely used in scientific computing libraries, yet their mathematical formulation is often implicit and inconsistently represented in machine learning literature. This problem frequently leads to invalid equations when element-wise products are written despite mismatched tensor shapes. In this paper, we formalize such operations by introducing the broadcast product $\boxdot$, which explicitly extends the Hadamard product through shape-aligned element duplication. We provide a rigorous definition of the broadcast product, analyze its algebraic properties, and show how it can be expressed using standard linear algebra. Building on this framework, we formulate least-squares problems and sketch a proof-of-concept broadcast decomposition. As a preliminary illustration, we show that the formalism enables a new family of decompositions with distinct structural properties from conventional tensor decompositions. This work establishes a mathematical foundation for broadcast-aware tensor operations, connecting practical implementations with rigorous tensor analysis.

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

Optimal learning of quantum channels in diamond distance

arXiv:2512.10214v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Quantum process tomography, the task of estimating an unknown quantum channel, is a central problem in quantum information theory. A long-standing open question is how many uses of an unknown channel are required to learn it in diamond distance, the standard metric for distinguishing quantum processes. While quantum state tomography is well understood, for general channels the problem remained open beyond the unitary case. Here we establish the query complexity of channel tomography with optimal dependence on the dimension parameters, at any fixed constant accuracy. We design an algorithm showing that any channel with input/output dimensions $d_{\mathrm{in}},d_{\mathrm{out}}$ and Kraus rank at most $k$ can be learned to accuracy $\varepsilon$ using $O(d_{\mathrm{in}}d_{\mathrm{out}}k/\varepsilon^{2})$ channel uses. Conversely, we prove that $\Omega(d_{\mathrm{in}}d_{\mathrm{out}}k)$ uses are necessary at constant accuracy and that, for non-minimal Kraus rank, a separate $\Omega(1/\varepsilon^{2})$ contribution is unavoidable. Since channels subsume states, unitaries, isometries, and measurements as special cases, our protocol provides a unified framework for these tomography tasks, yielding new guarantees for isometry and measurement tomography while recovering known optimal scalings for state and unitary tomography. Our algorithm follows the natural strategy of performing optimal tomography on the Choi state. The main technical contribution is to show that this suffices to control the induced diamond-distance error, avoiding the dimension loss incurred by a naive conversion from Choi-state trace distance to channel diamond distance. The protocol uses the channel non-adaptively to prepare Choi-state copies, purifies them in parallel, and performs optimal pure-state tomography on the resulting purifications. Hence, we reduce channel tomography to pure-state tomography.

15.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Purity and bound energy in ancilla-assisted work extraction

arXiv:2606.19945v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We investigate ancilla-assisted work extraction in quantum batteries from the perspective of bound energy and purity. We show that the bound energy of the reduced system provides a tight upper bound to the daemonic gain and that this bound is saturated for globally pure system–ancilla states. Motivated by this relation, we introduce a purity-based gain that qualitatively predicts the daemonic gain without requiring explicit optimization over measurements. We further introduce a protocol to analyze the role of dissipation and intrinsic interactions on daemonic gain. Under a collective environment, dissipation can dynamically generate and stabilize finite daemonic gain through environment-induced correlations. In interacting systems, level crossings and spectral restructuring strongly modify the attainable gain through their influence on the accessible bound energy. Our results demonstrate that daemonic gain is governed not only by correlations, but also by the spectral structure of the underlying Hamiltonian and information loss captured by bound energy and purity.

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

LLMs as ASP Programmers: Self-Correction Enables Task-Agnostic Nonmonotonic Reasoning

arXiv:2604.27960v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recent large language models (LLMs) have achieved impressive reasoning milestones but continue to struggle with high computational costs, logical inconsistencies, and sharp performance degradation on high-complexity problems. While neuro-symbolic methods attempt to mitigate these issues by coupling LLMs with symbolic reasoners, existing approaches typically rely on monotonic logics (e.g., SMT) that cannot represent defeasible reasoning – essential components of human cognition. We present "LLM+ASP," a framework that translates natural language into Answer Set Programming (ASP), a nonmonotonic formalism based on stable model semantics. Unlike prior "LLM+ASP" approaches that require manually authored knowledge modules, domain-specific prompts, or evaluation restricted to single problem classes, our framework operates without any per-task engineering and applies uniformly across diverse reasoning tasks. Our system utilizes an automated self-correction loop where structured feedback from the ASP solver enables iterative refinement. Evaluating across six diverse benchmarks, we demonstrate that: (1) stable model semantics allow LLMs to naturally express default rules and exceptions, outperforming SMT-based alternatives by significant margins on nonmonotonic tasks; (2) iterative self-correction is the primary driver of performance, effectively replacing the need for handcrafted domain knowledge; (3) compact in-context reference guides substantially outperform verbose documentation, revealing a "context rot" phenomenon where excessive context hinders constraint adherence.

17.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-25

TensorLDM: A Component-Wise Latent Diffusion Model for Volumetric DTI Reconstruction from Sparse DWIs

Reconstructing diffusion tensors from sparse DWIs is critical for accelerating Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) in clinical settings, yet current deep learning approaches frequently yield anatomically inconsistent or physically implausible tensors. We introduce TensorLDM, a component-wise latent diffusion model that processes the six tensor components through two group-specific encoders (for diagonal and off-diagonal elements) while maintaining anatomical consistency via shared DWI conditioning. TensorLDM uses an Anatomy-Conditioned Autoencoder that encourages the latent to focus on tensor properties rather than re-encoding structural information. A shared Cross-Component Attention (CCA) mechanism, applied in both autoencoder refinement and diffusion fine-tuning, models inter-component dependencies, while a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) DWI conditioner provides component-adaptive conditioning. On the Human Connectome Project (HCP) dataset under a single-shell, four-volume sparse acquisition, TensorLDM produces the most accurate downstream tractography and tensors with near-ground-truth physical validity (SPD-violation rate 1.54% vs. 1.40%), with the best or comparable voxel-wise reconstruction accuracy. Geodesic tensor error measured by the Log-Euclidean Metric (LEM) corroborates these gains.

18.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Decision-Aware Memory Cards: Counterfactual-Inspired Context Selection and Compression for Tool-Using LLM Agents

arXiv:2606.08151v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Modern large language model (LLM) agents do not simply need longer contexts; they need decision-relevant evidence at the moment of action. We study decision-aware context selection: ranking retrieved files, tests, traces, rules, and memories by their expected effect on an agent's next action rather than by semantic similarity alone. We present the Counterfactual-Inspired Context Layer (CICL), which builds an instance context graph, estimates decision-oriented utility for candidate units, and compresses selected evidence into typed memory cards. The same schema can be instantiated with hosted LLM judges, local surrogates, or lightweight rankers, making the selection protocol auditable across model choices. On 50 SWE-bench Verified file-retrieval instances, Qwen3.6-Plus reranking of BM25 top-50 candidates improves hit@1 from 0.58 to 0.78 and MRR@10 from 0.634 to 0.790, with all 2,500 judgments parseable. Controlled diagnostics show that CICL identifies action-critical evidence: removing the top-utility semantic unit reduces F1 from 0.245 to 0.000. In selected-then-compressed mode, memory cards save 44.93 tokens per query while preserving selected evidence. CICL provides a practical layer for measuring, ranking, and compressing decision-critical context for tool-using agents. Code is available at https://github.com/stephen-guan-researcher/CICL.

19.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

FeedEval: Pedagogically Aligned Evaluation of LLM-Generated Essay Feedback

Going beyond the prediction of numerical scores, recent research in automated essay scoring has increasingly emphasized the generation of high-quality feedback that provides justification and actionable guidance. To mitigate the high cost of expert annotation, prior work has commonly relied on LLM-generated feedback to train essay assessment models. However, such feedback is often incorporated without explicit quality validation, resulting in the propagation of noise in downstream applications. To address this limitation, we propose FeedEval, an LLM-based framework for evaluating LLM-generated essay feedback along three pedagogically grounded dimensions: specificity, helpfulness, and validity. FeedEval employs dimension-specialized LLM evaluators trained on datasets curated in this study to assess multiple feedback candidates and select high-quality feedback for downstream use. Experiments on the ASAP++ benchmark show that FeedEval closely aligns with human expert judgments and that essay scoring models trained with FeedEval-filtered high-quality feedback achieve superior scoring performance. Furthermore, revision experiments using small LLMs show that the high-quality feedback identified by FeedEval leads to more effective essay revisions. We release our code and curated datasets at: https://github.com/BBeeChu/FeedEval.git.

20.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Scheme for Transport-based Global Entanglement Distribution using Quantum Processors

arXiv:2606.15421v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We propose a scheme for distributing entanglement over global distances in a heralded manner by using satellites to physically transport entangled processor nodes with rare-earth-ion qubits. A full analysis of channel losses, errors and background light is performed to determine the fidelity and number of entangled pairs that can be distributed between two ground stations. We show that the scheme works already with a single satellite and can distribute close to the theoretical maximum number of entangled pairs that can be generated in a satellite overpass. In addition, we argue that in theory transportation-based schemes outperform other satellite-based schemes and can be scaled up to a constellation without additional channel losses. Daytime operation seems feasible as long as the sky is clear, with an EPR pair fidelity ranging from 99.3% at shorter network lengths to 93.9% with global coverage and can be further improved by active error correction or entanglement purification.

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

Self-Questioning Vision-Language Models: Reinforcement Learning for Compositional Visual Reasoning

Vision-Language Models (VLMs) are AI systems that process both images and text, yet they often struggle with compositional visual reasoning questions that require chaining multiple steps together, such as identifying objects, counting them, and comparing the results. Existing approaches improve this reasoning by training models on human-written step-by-step explanations, but creating these annotations is expensive and difficult to scale. We propose a self-questioning framework that trains a VLM to break visual questions into smaller sub-questions and answer each one before producing a final response, using a reinforcement learning algorithm called Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO). The model is never shown examples of how to decompose questions, it discovers this behavior on its own, guided by a reward signal that scores whether the output contains sub-questions and whether the final answer is correct. We apply this framework to a 3-billion-parameter model, training on both synthetic scenes of geometric shapes (CLEVR) and real-world photographs (A-OKVQA). On A-OKVQA, both self-questioning and standard reinforcement learning substantially improve accuracy over the untrained model (52.2% and 51.6% vs. 46.8%). We introduce the first self-questioning VLM by rewarding not only the final answer like standard RL but additionally for generating intermediate sub-questions, enabling it to discover compositional decomposition strategies. These results suggest that teaching AI systems to ask themselves intermediate questions is a promising strategy for complex visual reasoning, particularly when the difficulty of a question warrants explicit step-by-step decomposition.

22.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

Reinforcement Learning Disrupts Gradient-Based Adversarial Optimization

arXiv:2606.12251v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Gradient-based adversarial attacks remain a dominant threat to deep neural networks (DNNs), as they exploit gradient information to efficiently optimize adversarial perturbations. To address this, we investigate whether reinforcement learning (RL) training can disrupt the gradient structure used by attackers by training image classifiers with policy-gradient objectives and epsilon-greedy exploration. Through systematic experiments across CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and ImageNet-100 with multiple architectures, we find that RL-trained classifiers significantly disrupt gradient-based adversarial optimization. To explain this, we conduct a comprehensive mechanism analysis using loss landscape visualization, static and dynamic gradient indicators, and predictive entropy. Our analysis reveals that RL acts as an implicit regularizer, producing models with highly unstable gradient directions and smaller gradient magnitudes. This combination makes each PGD step both unreliable in direction and limited in magnitude, causing gradient-based attacks to fail within practical iteration budgets. We further show that combining RL with adversarial training (RL-adv) provides a dual-layer defense operating at two complementary levels: RL degrades gradient information available to attackers (gradient-level defense), while adversarial training strengthens decision boundaries (boundary-level defense). RL-adv achieves the highest robustness across all major attack types evaluated, including gradient-based (PGD, AutoAttack), transfer-based, and query-based attacks, outperforming SL-adv by a significant margin. These findings identify RL-induced gradient disruption as a complementary robustness mechanism and motivate future research on hybrid SL-RL training schedules that combine SL's efficiency with RL's gradient-regularization properties.

23.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19

iSAGE: A Human-in-the-Loop Framework for Remote Sensing Semantic Segmentation via Sparse Point Supervision

Semantic segmentation in remote sensing requires costly pixel-level annotations, and nearly every problem demands a new dataset since models rarely transfer across sensors, platforms, or geographies. Existing human-in-the-loop frameworks expand sparse clicks into dense supervision via auxiliary machinery (pseudo-labels, propagation, CRFs, foundation-model prompts, auxiliary heads), all operating on the model's predictive distribution. A confidently wrong pixel is indistinguishable from a confidently correct one in that distribution by construction, so no rule reading it can separate the two; the distinguishing signal is external to the model. This paper hypothesizes that expert clicks targeting confident model errors, not arbitrary pixels, suffice to match dense supervision, with no expansion machinery. iSAGE (Iterative Sparse Annotation Guided by Expert) realizes this hypothesis on an integrated open-source platform, where an error-weighted loss amplifies the gradient at each click and the annotation record itself is the dataset, extensible, correctable, and auditable. Experiments use a minimum-effort regime: at most one labeled pixel per class per frame. On BsB Aerial, iSAGE recovers 97.2% of dense supervision (74.79% mIoU on 0.040% of pixels) with contrasting class dynamics: amorphous classes (permeable areas) saturate from the seed, while small classes (cars) require late-iteration effort. On ISPRS Vaihingen (external benchmark), iSAGE reaches 76.78% mIoU with 0.011% of pixels, matching the dense baseline (76.65%) and exceeding all published methods. Under the same pipeline, four output-reading mechanisms (oracle entropy across budgets 1–100x, pseudo-labels across thresholds 0.90–0.99, CRF-based propagation, uniform random) plateau 7.4 to 14.5 pp below iSAGE. Across 31 surveyed methods, iSAGE is the only iterative human-in-the-loop framework operating without auxiliary machinery.

24.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

RLRC: Reinforcement Learning-based Recovery for Compressed Vision-Language-Action Models

arXiv:2506.17639v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Vision-Language-Action models (VLA) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities and strong potential in complex robotic manipulation. However, their large parameter sizes and high inference latency hinder real-world deployment, especially on resource-constrained platforms. To address this, we conduct a systematic empirical study of model compression for VLAs. Building on these insights, we present RLRC, a three-stage compression and recovery pipeline consisting of structured pruning, performance recovery via SFT and RL, and subsequent quantization. The RL stage incorporates a critic warm-up strategy and BC loss regularization to stabilize training and preserve policy behavior. RLRC achieves up to an 8 times memory reduction and 2.3 times inference speedup while maintaining the original task success rate. Extensive experiments across multiple VLA backbones show that RLRC consistently outperforms existing compression baselines, highlighting its effectiveness for on-device deployment. Project website: https://rlrc-vla.github.io

25.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-15

SMLMFlow: Improving Structural Resolution in Single Molecule Localization Microscopy with Flow Matching

While Single Molecule Localization Microscopy (SMLM) aims to generate precise coordinates of molecular targets in cells, the resulting point clouds are inherently blurred by additive noise sources across the experimental, imaging, and processing workflow. This blurring often limits SMLM's ability to accurately quantify complex assembled structures required to address biological issues, despite reported localization precision down to a couple of nanometers. Here, we present SMLMFlow, a machine learning framework for improving structural resolution in SMLM datasets that combines a graph neural network and a hierarchical transformer with flow matching. We show that SMLMFlow improves structural resolution and downstream quantification across different structures, including filaments and protein nano-clusters, and generalizes to new unseen photophysics models.