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01.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

A Security Analysis of Long-Horizon Agentic AI Systems: Threats, Evaluation, and Framework Development

arXiv:2606.14816v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper presents a structured analysis of security challenges in long-horizon agentic AI systems. The study reviews existing threats, evaluation approaches, attack propagation mechanisms, and security frameworks. A taxonomy of security threats and a framework for analyzing attack propagation are proposed to support future research in agentic AI security

02.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Q-Net: Queue Length Estimation via Kalman-based Neural Networks

arXiv:2509.24725v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Estimating queue lengths at signalized intersections is a long-standing challenge in traffic management. Partial observability of vehicle flows complicates this task despite the availability of two privacy-preserving data sources: (i) aggregated vehicle counts from loop detectors near stop lines, and (ii) aggregated floating car data (aFCD) that provide segment-wise average speed measurements. However, how to integrate these sources with differing spatial and temporal resolutions for queue length estimation is rather unclear. Addressing this question, we present Q-Net: a queue estimation framework built upon a state-space formulation. This design addresses key challenges in queue modeling, such as violations of traffic conservation assumptions. Q-Net follows the Kalman predict-update structure and maintains physical interpretability in both the state evolution and measurement models. Q-Net uses an AI-augmented Kalman filter to learn time-varying gain dynamics from data. The framework supports real-time implementation and improves spatial transferability by grouping aFCD measurements into fixed-size local groups, making the number of learnable parameters independent of section length. Evaluations on urban main roads in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, show that Q-Net outperforms baseline methods, tracks queue formation and dissipation accurately, and mitigates aFCD-induced delays. By combining data efficiency, interpretability, real-time applicability, and spatial transferability, Q-Net makes accurate queue length estimation possible without costly sensing infrastructure like cameras or radar.

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

eCNNTO: A Highly Generalizable ConvNet for Accelerating Topology Optimization

arXiv:2606.19921v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This work proposes an element-based Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to accelerate density-based Topology Optimization (TO), termed eCNNTO. TO generally undergoes a large number of iterations, where finite element analysis is performed in every iteration, leading to the efficiency bottleneck especially when dense meshes are used to achieve high-resolution designs. To address this limitation, eCNNTO is proposed to build upon Kallioras et al. (2020), where a Deep Belief Network (DBN) was trained for every element to predict its near-optimal density from its early history, thereby skipping the great majority of iterations and significantly accelerating the TO procedure. However, the method lacks spatial correlations among neighboring elements and may lead to disconnected features in the final structure. The proposed method employs CNN with residual connections to address this issue. On top of it, a novel training strategy is introduced to further enhance the optimization efficiency, where the training dataset consists of the final stage density histories rather than early ones. This change can also help reduce the required training data size. eCNNTO requires only a small dataset to train and yet it can be generalized to problems with largely different boundary conditions, loading cases, design domain geometries, mesh resolutions, as well as non-design domains. In the end, the generalization capabilities and efficiency of eCNNTO are demonstrated through a variety of examples in two and three dimensions, achieving up to 90% and 97% reduction of iterations, respectively.

04.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

Quantifying Subliminal Behavioral Transfer Ratios in Language Model Distillation

Distillation of a language model intended to transfer benign behavior to a student model may also transfer undesirable characteristics, if they are present in the teacher model, a phenomenon known as subliminal learning. While qualitative evidence supports the existence of this effect, its magnitude has not been systematically characterized. This study quantifies subliminal behavioral transfer ratios by steering two teacher models (Llama-2-7B-Chat and Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct) at varying steering strengths and distilling student models using only benign data. Evaluation on 100 JailbreakBench prompts with GPT-4.1, serving as the evaluator, indicates that transfer is robust but exhibits distinct scaling behaviors. Llama-2 demonstrates a sharp threshold ($\tau = {0.25,0.32} \ beyond \ \alpha = -0.15$), whereas Qwen2.5 displays continuous and higher levels of transfer ($\tau$ up to $0.61$).

05.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24

In-vivo glioma viscosity and fluidity as clinical tumor markers of vimentin expression and collective cell migration

Reduced fluidity and viscosity have been demonstrated as biomechanical hallmarks of in vivo glioblastoma and are increasingly used as radiological imaging markers by magnetic resonance elastography (MRE). However, the biological origin and consequences of this unusual mechanical behavior remain unclear. Here, we show that two mechanisms which promote collective cell migration are present in patient gliomas and can be detected in vivo by MRE-based cerebral tomoelastography. Vimentin-driven extracellular matrix remodeling and cellular elongation, quantified by automated histological readings and nuclear aspect ratio (AR) measurements, correlate with decreased in-vivo tumor fluidity and viscosity. These observations in patients are supported by experiments in tissue-mimicking actin-vimentin gels, which mechanistically link the soft-solid viscoelastic signature of in vivo glioma to vimentin's migration-promoting role and to AR-based observations of cellular elongation in unjammed cancer cell clusters. Taken together, our results suggest in-vivo bulk tumor viscosity as a noninvasive biomechanical marker of collective cell migration and invasiveness in brain tumors.

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

Consensus-based Agentic Large Language Model Framework for Harmonized Tariff Schedule Code Classification

arXiv:2606.16987v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Accurate Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) code classification is essential for customs clearance, duty assessment, trade statistics, and regulatory compliance in maritime logistics. However, exact HTS classification remains challenging because product descriptions are often short, incomplete, or ambiguous, while correct classification depends on hierarchical tariff structures, legal notes, and jurisdiction-specific rules. This paper proposes an agentic large language model (LLM) framework for Canadian 10-digit HTS code classification in smart-port and maritime logistics environments. The framework integrates multi-agent information retrieval, semantic retrieval over official tariff documents, evidence-grounded reasoning, consensus-based validation, element-wise voting across hierarchical code components, confidence estimation, and human-in-the-loop escalation. We evaluate the framework on a private dataset of 3,300 domain-expert-labeled product records collected from logistics and delivery contexts. Experimental results show that exact 10-digit classification remains difficult even for advanced LLMs, with performance decreasing from coarse chapter-level prediction to fine-grained tariff and statistical suffix assignment. These findings demonstrate the need for evidence-grounded, uncertainty-aware, and human-centered classification workflows rather than fully autonomous single-step prediction. The proposed framework supports more interpretable, accountable, and compliance-oriented HTS classification for maritime logistics and smart-port operations. Our code is available at https://github.com/Analytics-Everywhere-Lab/hts.

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

Subjective-Graph LLM Agents for Simulating Uncertainty in Classroom Social Perception

arXiv:2603.20750v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Social actors do not observe a common social world: each individual forms judgments from a partial and potentially distorted view of the surrounding network. We study whether graph-local evidence and credibility-weighted communication can generate persistent distortions in perceived academic standing, even when agents repeatedly receive objective performance signals. We introduce a data-constrained multi-agent framework in which LLM agents operate through individualized subjective graphs that determine peer visibility, evidence access, and interaction opportunities. Agents exchange uncertainty-annotated assessments, evaluate message credibility, and maintain explicit Gaussian belief states updated through Bayesian fusion. We evaluate the framework on 12 middle-school classrooms comprising 482 students, using questionnaire-derived social information and six consecutive examinations. On the Social-Observed subset (n=419), collective ranking error increases from 0.066 \pm 0.008 to 0.124 \pm 0.009 across six epochs despite repeated exam-based anchoring. Ablations associate individualized visibility and LLM-based trust gating with more stable long-horizon behavior, while constrained retrieval primarily safeguards against global-information leakage. Compared with evaluated DeGroot configurations, the proposed framework achieves lower final ranking error; those DeGroot configurations exhibit near-zero terminal opinion diversity. These findings establish subjective-graph LLM agents as a mechanism-oriented framework for data-constrained simulated social perception. Code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/Rashomonomon-0126.

08.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-17

A distant brown dwarf coplanar to a warm Jupiter and a hot super-Earth

In transiting planetary systems, in which planetary sizes are accurately determined from transit observations, the presence of transit-timing variations1 (TTVs), especially when combined with radial velocity (RV) data, provides powerful constraints on masses and orbital eccentricities. Together, these measurements offer crucial insights into system architecture, formation mechanisms and dynamical evolution. We present long-term RV and transit/TTV monitoring of the relatively young star (age approximately 1 Gyr) TOI-201, revealing an exceptional multi-planet system composed of a hot super-Earth (SE) size planet transiting every 5.8 days, a warm Jupiter (WJ) on a 53-day orbit and an eccentric (e = 0.62) low-mass brown dwarf (BD) on an approximately 8-year orbit, with an estimated mass MBD of about 16 Jupiter masses. The BD is the longest-period transiting substellar object ever characterized by means of RVs and the only one known to be coplanar with inner planets. The architecture of this system suggests that the SE was formed isolated and in the innermost region of the gaseous disk. On the other hand, the orbital configuration of the outer companions suggests a nearly in situ formation of both objects, with the WJ forming in a dense inner disk. Alternatively, the BD might have formed farther out and migrated inward, while increasing its eccentricity owing to interactions with the disk. Analysis of long-term radial velocity data and transit time variations, induced by a super-Earth, a warm Jupiter and a brown dwarf in a coplanar orbit around the relatively young star TOI201.

09.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

The Algebra of Units: From Buckingham's Pi-grec Theorem to Latent-Variable Learning

arXiv:2606.16737v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Engineers often measure many quantities-speed, pressure, temperature, length-expressed in different physical units. The Buckingham Pi-grec theorem states that these variables can always be combined into a smaller set of dimensionless numbers whose values fully determine the system's behaviour. Identifying the appropriate dimensionless groups has traditionally required expert knowledge and physical insight. This paper shows that they can instead be discovered automatically from data, without prior knowledge of the governing physics. The key observation is that, after logarithmic transformation, measurements collected under different scalings of the same system lie on a low-dimensional manifold whose geometry is determined by the underlying dimensionless groups. Singular value decomposition (SVD) identifies this manifold directly from data. A subsequent search over integer-exponent combinations recovers candidate dimensionless quantities, while a repeating-variable filter retains only those constructed from the machine's characteristic scales. This procedure recovers familiar engineering groups, including the flow coefficient, head coefficient, and Mach number, while excluding equivalent but less interpretable alternatives. The method is demonstrated on a synthetic compressor dataset containing 16,000 measurements. Starting from raw dimensional variables and no physics input, it recovers the correct dimensionless groups to numerical precision and reproduces the compressor performance map with an error below 0.01%. More broadly, the work reveals a close connection between classical dimensional analysis and modern data-driven learning. Both rely on the same underlying algebraic structure, suggesting new approaches for building physical models that are simultaneously interpretable, scalable, and data-efficient.

10.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-12

Causal Inference with Generative Artificial Intelligence: Application to Texts as Treatments

In this paper, we demonstrate how to enhance the validity of causal inference with unstructured high-dimensional treatments like texts, by leveraging the power of generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Specifically, we propose to use a deep generative model such as large language models (LLMs) to efficiently generate treatments and use their internal representation for subsequent causal effect estimation. We show that the knowledge of this true internal representation helps disentangle the treatment features of interest, such as specific sentiments and certain topics, from other possibly unknown confounding features. Unlike existing methods, the proposed GenAI-Powered Inference (GPI) methodology eliminates the need to learn causal representation from the data, and hence produces more accurate and efficient estimates. We formally establish the conditions required for the nonparametric identification of the average treatment effect, propose an estimation strategy that avoids the violation of the overlap assumption, and derive the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator through the application of double machine learning. Finally, using an instrumental variables approach, we extend the proposed GPI methodology to the settings in which the treatment feature is based on human perception. The GPI is also applicable to text reuse where an LLM is used to regenerate existing texts. We conduct simulation and empirical studies, using the generated text data from an open-source LLM, Llama 3, to illustrate the advantages of our estimator over state-of-the-art causal representation learning algorithms.

11.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

Beyond IGO-Flow: Toward Convergence Analysis of IGO in Continuous Spaces

arXiv:2606.17523v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Information-Geometric Optimization (IGO) provides a unified framework for black-box optimization by interpreting the adaptation of a search distribution as a natural gradient update. Despite its conceptual importance, the convergence theory of IGO remains limited: most existing results concern continuous-time idealizations such as the IGO flow, rather than discrete-time updates with non-infinitesimal learning rates. In this paper, we study discrete-time IGO in continuous spaces, formulated as natural gradient updates in the expectation-parameter coordinates of an exponential family. In particular, we analyze IGO over the multivariate Gaussian family on strongly convex quadratic objective functions. Our analysis covers a setting that simultaneously incorporates full covariance adaptation, a fixed positive learning rate, and quantile-based weights. In this setting, we prove that the covariance matrix converges to the zero matrix. We further show that the mean vector converges to the global optimum, provided that the condition number of the appropriately scaled covariance matrix is bounded at sufficiently frequent iterations. These results advance the convergence theory of IGO and help bridge the gap between the mathematical theory of IGO and practical covariance-adaptive search methods such as CMA-ES.

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

Physics-conforming Latent Twins

arXiv:2606.15053v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Surrogate models are central to scientific machine learning, where they enable fast prediction, simulation, inference, and control for complex physical systems. For time-dependent problems, however, accurate interpolation of training trajectories is not sufficient: reliable surrogates should also respect the conservation laws, invariants, admissibility conditions, and dissipative structures that give those trajectories physical meaning. We introduce Physics-conforming Latent Twins, a framework for learning latent surrogate solution operators whose dynamics satisfy selected physical principles by design. The method builds on the Latent Twin formulation by jointly learning an encoder, a decoder, and a latent flow map between arbitrary time-indexed states, while constraining the latent dynamics to preserve or dissipate prescribed structural quantities. We develop a constraint-transfer viewpoint that connects physical structure in the original state space with compatible constraints in latent space, and prove structure-preservation bounds showing how latent enforcement improves control of physical defects after decoding. We also derive algebraic conditions for latent flow maps that preserve linear and quadratic invariants or enforce dissipative inequalities. Numerical experiments on representative ODE and PDE benchmarks demonstrate improved constraint satisfaction, structural fidelity, and qualitative long-time behavior while maintaining accurate surrogate prediction.

13.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Analysing drivers and interdependencies in European electricity markets using XAI

arXiv:2606.19118v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Electricity markets are inherently complex systems characterised by strong nonlinearities, high-dimensional interactions, and increasing interdependence across regions. While deep neural networks (DNNs) have demonstrated strong predictive capabilities for electricity prices, their lack of interpretability limits their usefulness for understanding the underlying drivers of price formation. This paper addresses this gap by combining DNN models with explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques to analyse the determinants of electricity prices across 39 European bidding zones. We employ SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) to quantify feature contributions and apply and extend SSHAP, an aggregation framework to improve interpretability in high-dimensional settings. The analysis identifies that renewable energy sources, particularly solar, play a disproportionately important role in price formation despite their lower share in total power generation. Gas prices remain a dominant and consistent driver across electricity markets, while interconnections significantly shape price dynamics, highlighting the strong interdependence of European electricity systems. In addition, a synthetic EU-wide electricity market is constructed to explore the counterfactual scenario of a fully integrated market with a single price.

14.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

A Benchmark and Framework for Evaluating Next Action Predictions in Spreadsheets

arXiv:2606.13802v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Predictive code completion greatly accelerates how quickly developers work. In spreadsheets, despite being much more common, such auto-completion features are virtually non-existent. To address this gap, we introduce a benchmark for systems that observe a sequence of user actions in a spreadsheet and predict future actions. Two challenges are (1) the absence of edit histories in public spreadsheet corpora and (2) the complex space of spreadsheet actions (spatial, temporal, composite). To address (1), we manually curate 52 sequences of 12K actions that recreate spreadsheets from public corpora, seeded by parametrized heuristics and LLM refinement. To address (2), we propose an online evaluation that expects a prediction after each user action, accepts or rejects that prediction, updates the future actions upon acceptance, and repeats this until the target spreadsheet is obtained. We use multiple baseline predictors (including zero-shot LLMs, fine-tuned SLMs, and classical models) and analyze different properties that our benchmark teaches us, including but not limited to: properties of saved actions and false positives, efficiency, effect of user profiles, effect of triggers, and effect of context.

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

Accelerated Stochastic Min-Max Optimization Based on Bias-corrected Momentum

arXiv:2406.13041v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Lower-bound analyses for nonconvex strongly-concave minimax optimization problems have shown that stochastic first-order algorithms require at least $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{-4})$ sample complexity to find an $\varepsilon$-stationary point. Some works indicate that this complexity can be improved to $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{-3})$ when the stochastic loss gradient is Lipschitz continuous. The question of achieving enhanced convergence rates under distinct conditions, remains open. In this work, we address this question for optimization problems that are nonconvex in the minimization variable and strongly concave or Polyak-Lojasiewicz (PL) in the maximization variable. We introduce novel bias-corrected momentum algorithms utilizing efficient Hessian-vector products. We establish convergence conditions and demonstrate a lower iteration complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{-3})$ for the proposed algorithms. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through applications to robust logistic regression and robust adaptive cruise control.

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

Pixel-Level Residual Diffusion Transformer: Scalable 3D CT Volume Generation

Generating high-resolution 3D CT volumes with fine details remains challenging due to substantial computational demands and optimization difficulties inherent to existing generative models. In this paper, we propose the Pixel-Level Residual Diffusion Transformer (PRDiT), a scalable generative framework that synthesizes high-quality 3D medical volumes directly at voxel-level. PRDiT introduces a two-stage training architecture comprising 1) a local denoiser in the form of an MLP-based blind estimator operating on overlapping 3D patches to separate low-frequency structures efficiently, and 2) a global residual diffusion transformer employing memory-efficient attention to model and refine high-frequency residuals across entire volumes. This coarse-to-fine modeling strategy simplifies optimization, enhances training stability, and effectively preserves subtle structures without the limitations of an autoencoder bottleneck. Extensive experiments conducted on the LIDC-IDRI and RAD-ChestCT datasets demonstrate that PRDiT consistently outperforms state-of-the-art models, such as HA-GAN, 3D LDM and WDM-3D, achieving significantly lower 3D FID, MMD and Wasserstein distance scores.

17.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-18

pykarambola: Minkowski tensor morphometry of 3D structures

Three-dimensional biological morphologies encode functional and physiological state, yet the directional, orientational, and topological properties of these shapes are rarely captured by morphometric tools available for bioimage analysis. Minkowski tensors are mathematically rigorous tensor-valued measures that encode surface curvature and directionality for objects of arbitrary topology, with tensor eigensystems that directly quantify elongation axes and anisotropy. A C++ implementation, karambola, computes Minkowski tensors for triangulated surfaces but is inaccessible within Python-based bioimage workflows. Here we present pykarambola, a pip installable Python package that accepts NumPy arrays and standard mesh formats and returns Minkowski tensors, including derived anisotropy and orientation quantities. A high-level label-image API converts 3D integer arrays into per-object Minkowski tensors in a single call, making pykarambola directly compatible with the output of widely used segmentation tools. An optional Cython extension accelerates graph-traversal steps of mesh initialization for large-scale analyses. Benchmarked on 1,584 adrenal gland meshes, pykarambola reproduces all 121 C++ karambola output features to near-floating-point agreement and, in the pure-Python build, is 2.8x faster at 28^3 and 1.5x faster at 64^3 voxel resolution, with speedups primarily attributable to karambola's sequential per-object file I/O. pykarambola is freely available as an open-source software package.

18.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

MLaGA: Multimodal Large Language and Graph Assistant

arXiv:2506.02568v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated substantial efficacy in advancing graph-structured data analysis. Prevailing LLM-based graph methods excel in adapting LLMs to text-rich graphs, wherein node attributes are text descriptions. However, their applications to multimodal graphs–where nodes are associated with diverse attribute types, such as texts and images–remain underexplored, despite their ubiquity in real-world scenarios. To bridge the gap, we introduce the Multimodal Large Language and Graph Assistant (MLaGA), an innovative model that adeptly extends LLM capabilities to facilitate reasoning over complex graph structures and multimodal attributes. We first design a structure-aware multimodal encoder to align textual and visual attributes within a unified space through a joint graph pre-training objective. Subsequently, we implement a multimodal instruction-tuning approach to seamlessly integrate multimodal features and graph structures into the LLM through lightweight projectors. Extensive experiments across multiple datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of MLaGA compared to leading baseline methods, achieving superior performance in diverse graph learning tasks under both supervised and transfer learning scenarios.

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

Chiral Lattice Gauge Theories from Symmetry Disentanglers

arXiv:2601.04304v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We propose a Hamiltonian framework for constructing chiral gauge theories on the lattice based on symmetry disentanglers: constant-depth circuits of local unitaries that transform not-on-site symmetries into on-site ones. When chiral symmetry can be realized not-on-site and such a disentangler exists, the symmetry can be implemented in a strictly local Hamiltonian and gauged by standard lattice methods. Using lattice rotor models, we realize this idea in 1+1 and 3+1 spacetime dimensions for $U(1)$ symmetries with mixed 't Hooft anomalies, and show that symmetry disentanglers can be constructed when anomalies cancel. As an example, we present an exactly solvable Hamiltonian lattice model of the (1+1)-dimensional "3450" chiral gauge theory, and we argue that a related construction applies to the $U(1)$ hypercharge symmetry of the Standard Model fermions in 3+1 dimensions. Our results open a new route toward fully local, nonperturbative formulations of chiral gauge theories.

20.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-25

Incremental Residual Reinforcement Learning Toward Real-World Learning for Social Navigation

arXiv:2604.07945v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As the demand for mobile robots continues to increase, social navigation has emerged as a critical task, driving active research into deep reinforcement learning (RL) approaches. However, because pedestrian dynamics and social conventions vary widely across different regions, simulations cannot easily encompass all possible real-world scenarios. Real-world RL, in which agents learn while operating directly in physical environments, presents a promising solution to this issue. Nevertheless, this approach faces significant challenges, particularly regarding constrained computational resources on edge devices and learning efficiency. In this study, we propose incremental residual RL (IRRL). This method integrates incremental learning, which is a lightweight process that operates without a replay buffer or batch updates, with residual RL, which enhances learning efficiency by training only on the residuals relative to a base policy. Through the simulation experiments, we demonstrated that, despite lacking a replay buffer, IRRL achieved performance comparable to those of conventional replay buffer-based methods and outperformed existing incremental learning approaches. Furthermore, the real-world experiments confirmed that IRRL can enable robots to effectively adapt to previously unseen environments through the real-world learning.

21.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

Physically Constrained Ensemble Gaussian Process Modelling for Expensive Quantum Systems with Heteroskedastic Noise

arXiv:2606.11240v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Accurate modeling of quantum many-body systems often requires computationally expensive simulations such as Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) or Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations. These methods, while precise, impose significant time and resource constraints, limiting their use in exhaustive parameter exploration. Moreover, these expensive simulations can contain variable errors over the large unknown parameter space, which needs to be quantified and propagated. Thus, predictive modelling is required to estimate the functional space accurately over scarcely sampled data with heteroskedastic noise, while preserving the physical relevance of the estimation. Therefore, we present a Physically Constrained Ensemble Gaussian Process (pc-EGP) framework designed to efficiently model complex and noisy quantum systems under physical consistency constraints. The proposed method first enforces physical constraints as a user controlled weighted penalty to the data-driven loss function of the Gaussian Process (GP) surrogates. Then an ensemble of such GP models is trained with variable noisy simulations via numerical quadrature method where these multiple GP(s) at different nodes is integrated as a quadrature weighted average. We first demonstrate the framework on synthetically generated data before applying to quantum systems. In the first case study, we leverage DMRG simulations of the Bose-Hubbard Model to predict the critical interaction parameter Uc governing the superfluid-to-Mott-insulator transition. In the second case study, we demonstrate our method on QMC simulations, of a quantum liquid confined inside a nanoporous silicate with the goal of optimizing a chemical environment to realize a one-dimensional superfluid. Compared to conventional GP, pc-EGP achieves a better balance of accuracy and physically meaningful predictions.

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

Improved Baselines with Representation Autoencoders

Representation Autoencoders (RAE) replace traditional VAE with pretrained vision encoders. In this paper, we systematically investigate several design choices and find three insights which simplify and improve RAE. First, we study a generalized formulation where the representation is defined as sum of the last k encoder layers rather than solely the final layer. This simple change greatly improves reconstruction without encoder finetuning or specialized data (e.g., text, faces). Second, we study the prevalent assumption that RAE (using pretrained representation as encoder) replaces representation alignment (REPA), which distills the same representation to intermediate layers instead. Through large-scale empirical analysis, we uncover a surprising finding: RAE and REPA exhibit complementary working mechanisms, allowing the same representation to be used as both encoder and target for intermediate diffusion layers. Finally, the original RAE struggles with classifier-free guidance (CFG) and requires training a second, weaker diffusion model for AutoGuidance (AG). We show that REPA itself can be viewed as x-prediction in RAE latent space. By simply re-parameterizing the output of the DiT model, it can provide guidance for "free". Overall, RAEv2 leads to more than 10x faster convergence over the original RAE, achieving a state-of-the-art gFID of 1.06 in just 80 epochs on ImageNet-256. On FDr6, RAEv2 achieves a state-of-the-art 2.17 at just 80 epochs compared to the previous best 3.26 (800 epochs) without any post-training. This motivates EPFID@k (epochs to reach unguided gFID < k) as a measure of training efficiency. RAEv2 attains an EPFID@2 of 35 epochs, versus 177 for the original RAE. We also validate our approach across diverse settings for text-to-image generation and navigation world models, showing consistent improvements. The code is available at https://raev2.github.io.

23.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-23

Daily briefing: NASA to launch satellite-rescue mission

Authors:

The space agency will lift the orbit of a falling satellite by around 200 kilometres. Plus, Europe’s efforts to take on the US and China as a science superpower and the narcissism of bosses who want to nix remote working. The space agency will lift the orbit of a falling satellite by around 200 kilometres. Plus, Europe’s efforts to take on the US and China as a science superpower and the narcissism of bosses who want to nix remote working.

24.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24

Genetically Proxied Interleukin-6 Inhibition and Cancer Risk: A Multi-Ancestry Drug-Target Mendelian Randomization Study of Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Colorectal Cancer

Background: Interleukin-6 (IL-6) signalling drives chronic inflammation and is therapeutically targeted by tocilizumab, an approved IL-6 receptor inhibitor. Whether genetically proxied lifelong IL-6 inhibition causally influences the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or colorectal cancer (CRC) remains unanswered. Prior single-variant estimates from pooled observational data are methodologically limited and may reflect confounding. Methods: A two-sample drug-target Mendelian randomization (MR) study was conducted. Four independent cis-acting protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL) variants within the IL6 and IL6R gene loci (rs2228145, rs4129267, rs7529229, rs1800795) were selected as genetic instruments , with F-statistics ranging from 32.3 to 120.5, confirming instrument strength. Outcome data were obtained from four independent genome-wide association studies: HCC from BioBank Japan (BBJ; 1,866 cases, 195,745 controls), HCC from FinnGen Release 10 (674 cases, 218,118 controls), CRC from a European meta-analysis (19,948 cases, 12,124 controls), and CRC from BBJ (7,062 cases, 195,745 controls). Causal estimates were derived using inverse variance weighted (IVW) regression as the primary method, with MR-Egger and weighted median analyses as sensitivity methods. Cochran Q statistics assessed heterogeneity and MR-Egger intercept testing assessed directional pleiotropy. Results: Genetically proxied IL-6 inhibition showed no significant causal effect on HCC risk in East Asian populations (IVW odds ratio [OR] 0.997, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.903 to 1.101, p=0.953) or European populations (IVW OR 0.984, 95% CI 0.802 to 1.208, p=0.880). Similarly, no causal effect was observed on CRC risk in European populations (IVW OR 1.015, 95% CI 0.957 to 1.075, p=0.623) or East Asian populations (IVW OR 0.999, 95% CI 0.948 to 1.052, p=0.971). Sensitivity analyses confirmed the absence of directional pleiotropy and heterogeneity across all four analyses. Leave-one-out analyses demonstrated that no single instrument drove the null findings. Conclusions: Genetically proxied IL-6 receptor inhibition, modelling the therapeutic effect of tocilizumab, showed no causal effect on HCC or CRC risk across four independent cohorts and two ancestries. These findings do not support a role for IL-6 pathway inhibition in the prevention of these cancers and provide reassuring genetic safety evidence regarding cancer risk in patients receiving tocilizumab. Larger HCC-specific GWAS are needed to definitively evaluate modest effects in this cancer type.

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

Medical Heuristic Learning: An LLM-Driven Framework for Interpretable and Auditable Clinical Decision Rules

arXiv:2606.16337v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Predictive modeling for clinical tabular data is central to clinical decision support and therefore requires not only strong predictive performance but also transparent decision logic. Although deep learning and tree-based ensemble methods can achieve high accuracy, their black-box nature remains a major obstacle to clinical deployment. This challenge is further compounded by common characteristics of medical data, including limited sample sizes, severe class imbalance, and feature evolution arising from changes in diagnostic criteria and clinical documentation. To address these issues, we propose Medical Heuristic Learning (MHL), an instantiation of the learning-beyond-gradients paradigm for clinical tabular prediction. Instead of relying on neural network weight updates, MHL uses a large language model (LLM)-driven workflow that integrates statistical probes, medical knowledge probes, rule synthesis, and code-level iterative refinement to optimize a deterministic and executable decision system. The resulting model is expressed not as opaque parameters, but as versioned pure-Python decision rules that are explicitly interpretable, fully auditable, and clinically grounded. MHL also supports continual learning by starting from previously validated rules and iteratively revising them using updated feature information under data drift or feature evolution. Comprehensive experiments on medical datasets show that MHL achieves performance comparable to state-of-the-art methods while maintaining strong behavior in small-sample and highly imbalanced settings. The results further indicate that this explicit rule update mechanism can help alleviate catastrophic forgetting under feature evolution. Overall, these findings suggest that non-gradient-based heuristic systems offer a transparent and adaptable alternative for high-stakes clinical decision support.