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01.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

MathVis-Fine: Aligning Visual Supervision with Necessity via Progressive Dependency-Guided Training for Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning

arXiv:2606.17888v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning has extended from purely linguistic domains to multimodal scenarios; however, existing approaches often treat visual inputs as homogeneous or auxiliary signals, failing to capture the intricate and sample-specific dependencies between text and images in mathematical problem-solving. This gives rise to two core issues: first, the supervisory signals for visual content are generalized and coarse-grained, lacking adaptation to the actual necessity of visual information in each sample; second, training feedback becomes inaccurate when visual rewards are uniformly applied without distinguishing the complementary relationships among inputs. These limitations hinder models from achieving precise multimodal reasoning. In this work, we propose a framework for modeling fine-grained visual dependencies in mathematical reasoning. We first construct the MathVis-Fine dataset, augmenting fine-grained visual annotations with visual dependency ratings. Building upon this dataset, we introduce a two-stage progressive visual enhancement training paradigm that balances answer correctness rewards and visual grounding rewards according to the intrinsic visual dependency level of each sample, thereby mitigating reward bias and improving supervision accuracy. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the MathVis-Fine framework effectively enhances visual perception progressively based on visual dependency, offering a more precise training framework for multimodal mathematical reasoning. We will release the dataset upon acceptance.

02.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-24

Do LLM Attribution Metrics Transfer? Auditing Retrieval-Augmented Generation Evaluation Across Datasets and Constructs

Practice often treats automatic metrics for attribution in LLM retrieval-augmented generation as interchangeable. We audit eight automatic scorers – lexical, embedding, and BERTScore baselines alongside entailment/grounding-trained models (clean and FEVER NLI, the checker MiniCheck) – across three evaluation constructs (provenance/topicality, generated-answer attribution, and fact-check entailment), asking whether any scorer transfers: stays within the 95% confidence interval of the best audited scorer on every dataset of a multi-dataset construct. In the construct with the most multi-dataset human-labeled coverage – generated-answer attribution (AttributionBench's four source datasets, n = 1,610, with independent HAGRID, n = 2,150) – none does: the per-dataset metric rankings invert (Kendall tau = -0.64, p = 0.031 on AttributedQA vs. LFQA), and an off-the-shelf NLI scorer that is best on short-claim AttributedQA (AUROC 0.90) collapses to AUROC 0.53 (chance) on long-form LFQA, where BERTScore wins (0.91); the flip is not a length or truncation artifact. This instability has a concrete decision cost: a naive "best-on-average" rule for choosing an evaluator fails leave-one-dataset-out (mean held-out regret 0.172 AUROC, worse than fixing one scorer), so metric choice must be validated on the target dataset rather than learned from others. A prompt-based LLM judge avoids the chance-level collapses the automatic scorers suffer (no LFQA collapse) but is not uniformly best, ~100x costlier, and non-deterministic – relocating, not removing, the validation burden.

03.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Quantized time in quantum walks under weak rank-K measurements

Authors:

arXiv:2606.13552v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Measurements can be used to monitor the evolution of quantum systems and may lead to a universally quantized time statistics. It is known that the mean return time is quantized for strong and indirect monitoring through the winding number of the return amplitude in a one-dimensional space. Here we discuss that under multi-channel strong or indirect monitoring, where the latter is achieved through ancilla coupling, the mean return time of a quantum walk in the projected subspace is also quantized. This reflects a universal time quantization for a higher dimensional evolution.

04.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

Decoupled Latent Optimization of Diffusion Models for Full Waveform Inversion

arXiv:2606.14139v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Full waveform inversion (FWI) recovers subsurface velocity from seismic recordings by solving a severely ill-posed, nonconvex PDE-constrained optimization. Classical regularizers stabilize the inversion but fail to reproduce realistic geological structures; recent diffusion-prior methods improve realism at the cost of a fragile trade-off between data fidelity and prior consistency. We propose Decoupled Latent Optimization (DLO), which relaxes the standard latent-optimization formulation into a quadratic-penalty objective over an auxiliary physical variable and a latent variable. The data-fidelity gradient acts in physical space, the diffusion sampler contributes only through a decoded prior sample, and the standard smoothed-velocity initialization of classical FWI is preserved. On the OpenFWI benchmark, DLO outperforms classical regularizers and existing diffusion-based methods under clean, noisy, and missing-trace acquisitions. The prior, trained on 70*70 OpenFWI models, transfers directly to the Marmousi and Overthrust benchmarks, where DLO recovers intricate fault structures and remains robust to initialization smoothing and measurement noise.

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

Toward the Whole Picture: Accumulative Fingerprint Mapping and Reconstruction for Small-Area Mobile Sensors

Small-area fingerprint sensing on mobile devices creates a fundamental mismatch between acquisition and recognition: each touch captures only a tiny, pose-varying local patch, while reliable biometric matching ultimately requires a stable and sufficiently complete fingerprint representation. Existing pipelines largely cope with this mismatch by treating repeated touches as independent partial templates, which leads to repeated registration, repeated matching, and no guarantee of adequate global coverage. In this paper, we advocate a different formulation, namely accumulative fingerprint mapping and reconstruction for small-area mobile sensing. Rather than matching every partial patch separately, the proposed perspective converts a sequence of local observations into a unified fingerprint state that is progressively refined as new touches arrive and can be matched only once after consolidation. As a concrete baseline, we present a classical pipeline that performs patch-wise structural feature extraction, feature-level registration and fusion, fingerprint map construction, and phase-based ridge reconstruction. More importantly, we position this baseline within a broader mobile fingerprint framework that integrates structured token learning, two-stage pose reasoning, and diffusion-based generative reconstruction. This viewpoint reframes mobile fingerprint recognition from multi-capture multi-match processing to accumulative map building, state refinement, and one-shot matching, offering a principled route toward efficient, pose-robust, and deployment-friendly biometrics for small-area mobile platforms. The baseline implementation has been publicly released at https://github.com/XiongjunGuan/FpReconstruction.

06.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-22

Isotopic evidence for a cold and distant origin of 3I/ATLAS

Interstellar objects provide the only directly observable samples of icy planetesimals formed around other stars, and can therefore provide insight into the diversity of physical and chemical conditions occurring during exoplanet formation1−3. Here we report isotopic measurements of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which reveal an elemental composition unlike any Solar System body. The water in 3I/ATLAS is enriched in deuterium, at a level of D/H = (0.98 ± 0.06)%, which is more than an order of magnitude higher than in known comets, while its range of 12C/13C ratios (141–191 for CO2 and 123–172 for CO) exceeds typical values found in the Solar System, as well as nearby interstellar clouds and protoplanetary disks. Such extreme isotopic signatures indicate formation at temperatures  ≲ 30 K in a relatively metal-poor environment. When interpreted with respect to models for Galactic chemical evolution, the carbon isotopic composition implies that 3I/ATLAS may have accreted as long ago as 12 billion years, following a period of intense, early star formation. 3I/ATLAS thus represents a preserved fragment of an ancient planetary system.

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

We Need to Rethink Benchmarking in Anomaly Detection

arXiv:2507.15584v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Despite the continuous proposal of new anomaly detection algorithms and extensive benchmarking efforts, progress seems to stagnate, with only minor performance differences between established baselines and new algorithms. In this position paper, we argue that this stagnation is due to limitations in how we evaluate anomaly detection algorithms. In current benchmarks, a trivial algorithm that only checks for extreme values in individual features performs competitively with state-of-the-art deep learning methods, despite failing on simple cases such as anomalies within an annulus of normal points. Moreover, existing benchmarks do not adequately reflect the diversity of anomaly detection applications, making it difficult for practitioners to reliably select algorithms for their applications. Consequently, we need to rethink benchmarking in anomaly detection. In our opinion, anomaly detection should be studied using scenarios that group applications sharing relevant characteristics, defined through a common taxonomy. Benchmarking within scenarios enables scenario-specific choices for preprocessing, metrics, and model selection, clarifying which advances transfer across similar applications and providing practitioners with reliable guidance for their specific contexts.

08.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

The Insurability Frontier of AI Risk: Mapping Threats to Affirmative Coverage, Silent Exposures, and Exclusions

arXiv:2605.18784v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The rapid diffusion of agentic AI has created a new coverage problem for commercial insurance: some AI-mediated losses are now affirmatively insured, some create silent-AI exposure under legacy cyber, technology errors-and-omissions (E&O), directors-and-officers (D&O), employment practices liability (EPLI), crime, and media policies, and others are being actively excluded. This paper maps that emerging boundary by coding 55 AI threat classes against 26 insurance products, endorsements, and exclusion regimes using public carrier materials and OWASP/MITRE threat catalogs. We identify a four-tier insurability frontier: affirmatively insured perils, silent-AI exposures, actively excluded perils, and perils outside conventional private insurance structures. Our coding measures publicly claimed positioning rather than executed contract wording; the headline statistics describe what carriers publicly state about coverage, not what would be paid in any specific claim. Three patterns emerge. First, affirmative AI coverage is beginning to differentiate by primary risk emphasis: public materials often position Munich Re around model performance and drift, Armilla and parts of the Lloyd's market around hallucination and broader AI liability, Tokio Marine Kiln and CFC around IP and technology E&O concerns, Apollo ibott around emerging autonomous system liability, and Coalition around deepfake and AI-enabled cyber response. Second, legacy lines retain silent-AI exposure where AI is an instrumentality rather than the legal cause of loss. Third, foundation model concentration is the clearest genuinely novel insurability frontier because upstream model failure can correlate losses across many cedents at once; the relevant market design question is which insurability constraint each candidate structure relaxes, not merely which systemic risk template exists.

09.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

Translating the Untranslatable: An Operationalizable Ontology for Untranslatability

Untranslatability, cases where meaning cannot be directly preserved across languages, is well-studied in linguistics but underexplored in NLP. As machine translation (MT) systems improve on standard benchmarks, their limitations increasingly concentrate in such cases, where translation cannot be reduced to one-to-one equivalence. We introduce a structured ontology of untranslatability along with a taxonomy of compensation strategies, which are specific techniques to convey meaning under these untranslatable circumstances. We operationalize this framework into a multilingual dataset of untranslatable sentences paired with strategy-based translations, enabling controlled analysis of translation behavior. Initial human preference studies suggest that translation quality depends on the strategy used, with consistent preferences for outputs that include explanatory context, known as the Annotation compensation strategy. Our framework and dataset provide a foundation for studying and modeling strategy-informed machine translation.

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

When and How Severely: Scenario-Specific Safety Envelopes for Driving VLAs

arXiv:2606.14238v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Safety certification of Vision-Language-Action (VLA) driving planners under ISO 21448 (SOTIF) rests on an Operational Design Domain (ODD) specification that answers two complementary questions: when does the planner start to fail, and how severely does it fail once it does? We evaluate Alpamayo R1, a 10B-parameter open-weight driving VLA, on 15,968 (clip, attack) pairs. We find a conservative-aggregate gap: an aggregate safe threshold of $\sigma \leq 50$ under a 15% average displacement error (ADE) budget masks well-sampled scenarios that tolerate the top of the tested grid ($\sigma = 70$). A Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) on the changed-explanation subset identifies six discrete severity bands (BIC-optimal $k{=}6$), so two perturbation conditions with the same mean error can differ materially in their share of high-severity (C4/C5) failures. Joining the two analyses on the same corpus surfaces a finding neither yields in isolation: the scenarios with the loosest noise thresholds are not those with the lowest high-severity rate: STOP_SIGNAL concentrates roughly $4\times$ the C4/C5 share of LANE_KEEPING despite tolerating a larger $\sigma$. A deployable SOTIF ODD specification for driving VLAs therefore requires a two-dimensional safety envelope, not a single aggregate value per hazard.

11.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-24

Queues with Correlated Service Times – the $M/M_D/c$ Model

arXiv:2606.24881v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper studies multi-server queueing systems with correlated service times, modeled as the $M/M_D/c$ queue, which is a natural extension of the recent work by Thapa and Zhao [Thapa-Zhao:2026]. In this model, arrivals follow a Poisson process, while service times across servers exhibit dependence captured by the Marshall–Olkin multivariate exponential distribution (MO-MVED). We first develop a rigorous sample-path construction of the system and establish that the resulting queueing process is a continuous-time Markov chain. We then analyze the stationary behavior of the $M/M_D/c$ model. In the homogeneous case, we derive a complete solution via geometric tail structure and explicit boundary equations, recovering a tractable one-dimensional representation. In the heterogeneous case, we establish a general framework combining a geometric tail with a finite boundary system, and prove existence, uniqueness, and nonnegativity of the stationary distribution. The above results provide a unified analytic framework extending classical $M/M/c$ theory to correlated-service settings, and reveal how dependence among service times fundamentally affects system performance and structure. Beyond the $M/M_D/c$ model, We next study the interplay between Marshall–Olkin service dependence and queue-state Markovianity. On the one hand, Marshall–Olkin dependent service completions are shown to preserve Markovianity for a broad class of queueing systems. On the other hand, if a queueing process admits a Markovian state description without tracking service ages, residual service times, or service phases, then its service mechanism must satisfy a weak multivariate lack-of-memory property and consequently belongs to the Marshall–Olkin family. These results provide a probabilistic foundation for the use of Marshall–Olkin multivariate exponential service times in Markovian queueing models.

12.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-10

Frozen elephant trunk repair in heritable thoracic aortic disease: Impact of genetic aortopathy on long-term outcomes - A multicenter analysis

Aims This multicenter study aims to compare outcomes of total aortic arch replacement (TAR) using the frozen elephant trunk (FET) technique in patients with and without heritable thoracic aortic disease (HTAD) and to assess whether HTAD influences postprocedural adverse aortic events (AAEs). Methods From 06/2007 to 05/2024, aortic databases from 13 European centers were screened for HTAD patients undergoing TAR with FET. All consecutive dissection and aneurysm non-HTAD patients from the four core centers served as comparator. The primary outcome was AAE, a composite of diameter progression, distal stent graft induced new entry (dSINE), malperfusion, rupture and pseudoaneurysm at 5 years after FET implantation. Results Of 2739 FET patients, 196 (7.2%) were diagnosed with HTAD. The control group consisted of 867 non-HTAD FET patients. Marfan syndrome was the most common condition (72%), followed by Loeys-Dietz syndrome (11%), vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (5.6%) and Turner syndrome (2.0%). Seventeen (8.8%) patients were diagnosed with ns-HTAD. At 5 years 46 (24%) AAEs occurred in the HTAD group, 169 (20%) in the non-HTAD group (p=0.2). Diameter progression was the most common event (10% vs. 12%; p=0.6), followed by dSINE (5.8% vs. 4.5%; p=0.5), malperfusion (4.2% vs. 3.3%; p=0.5), rupture (2.1% vs. 0.7%; p=0.09) and pseudoaneurysm (0.5% vs. 0.2%; p=0.5). Conclusions The FET technique appears safe and effective for acute and chronic aortic disease in HTAD patients, with outcomes comparable to non-HTAD cases and no increase in graft-related complications, challenging traditional concerns about stent graft use in genetically mediated aortic disease.

13.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Programmable Gauge-Field Textures with Ultracold Atoms in Momentum Space

arXiv:2606.15124v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Synthetic gauge fields with ultracold atoms offer a route to quantum matter in which electromagnetic environments can be designed rather than merely imposed. While the Harper-Hofstadter model has been realized in several cold-atom systems, existing implementations are largely limited to spatially uniform magnetic fluxes. Here we experimentally realize a highly programmable two-dimensional momentum-state lattice of ultracold atoms with local control over the Peierls phase pattern, enabling direct implementation of Harper-Hofstadter Hamiltonians with tunable and spatially structured synthetic gauge fields. We observe a crossover from ballistic to strongly flux-modified bulk dynamics with suppressed transport. By introducing a synthetic electric field through site-dependent energy gradients, we further demonstrate Hall-type transverse drift arising from the interplay between electric and magnetic fields. In addition, we engineer a synthetic flux domain wall separating regions with opposite magnetic fluxes and observe anisotropic propagation guided along the interface. These results move cold-atom gauge-field engineering from uniform magnetic backgrounds toward designer gauge textures, providing an experimental setting for transport across programmable topological interfaces.

14.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-24

Machine Learning and Deep Learning for Exoplanet Detection and Atmospheric Characterization with JWST and the Upcoming Ariel Mission

arXiv:2606.23766v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The detection and atmospheric characterization of exoplanets have entered a new data-intensive era driven by the James Webb Space Telescope and the upcoming Ariel mission. Modern surveys produce millions of light curves and high-resolution spectra that overwhelm traditional pipelines, motivating the rapid integration of Machine Learning and Deep Learning methods into the exoplanet workflow. This review synthesizes the latest progress in applying ML/DL techniques to exoplanet detection (transit identification, candidate vetting, false-positive rejection) and atmospheric characterization (retrieval, detrending, cross-correlation, surrogate modelling) in the context of JWST and Ariel. We start with classical algorithms such as Random Forests and Convolutional Neural Networks, move through Transformers and Recurrent architectures, then survey modern simulation-based inference using Neural Posterior Estimation and Flow Matching Posterior Estimation with normalizing or continuous normalizing flows. We discuss benchmark efforts, including the Ariel Machine Learning Data Challenges (2019 to 2025) hosted with NeurIPS, and key JWST case studies such as the WASP-39b Early Release Science programme. Results indicate that DL approaches consistently match or exceed traditional pipelines in both speed and accuracy, while ML-driven retrievals reduce inference time from CPU-hours to seconds and can accelerate nested-sampling retrievals by factors of 3-8 without compromising Bayesian evidence. We identify outstanding challenges interpretability, calibration of uncertainties under noisy data, hybrid modelling, and the generalization of models across instruments and planet populations and outline a research roadmap spanning the JWST era and beyond into Ariel's launch in 2029.

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

MPC-Patch-Bench: Security-Aware LLM Code Patch for Multi-Party Computation

arXiv:2606.11416v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Repository-level benchmarks for evaluating Large Language Model (LLM) code repair on Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC) software do not yet exist, and directly transplanting general-purpose benchmarks such as SWE-bench fails on three structural fronts: (i) MPC repositories are dominated by generic Python infrastructure rather than cryptographic logic; (ii) high-value MPC fixes lack the standardized tests rigid extraction pipelines require; and (iii) standard fail-to-pass evaluation is insufficient for code that must also be cryptographically safe. MPC is increasingly deployed for privacy-preserving machine learning, biomedical collaboration, and secure analytics. Existing MPC-specific code-synthesis efforts cover only operator-level or single-framework tasks; evaluating LLM agents on real repository-level MPC repair instead demands MPC-aware data curation and a verifier matched to the security and numerical-fidelity guarantees MPC programs must obey neither of which existing benchmarks provide. We introduce MPC-Patch-Bench, a repository-level benchmark organised around two frameworks. (1)The Data Curation Framework combines a domain-specific curation agent that filters raw pull requests through three cryptographic layers with a human-AI completion engine that synthesizes missing problem statements and Fail-to-Pass/Pass-to-Pass tests, yielding 205 fully verified instances. (2)The MPC Verifier provides dedicated security and numerical-fidelity checks via dynamic differential testing against plaintext oracles and MPC-specific static analysis rules that flag unsafe reveals, insecure arithmetic, and illegal public/private casts. The strongest evaluated LLM functionally resolves only 22.9% of MPC-Patch-Bench tasks; the MPC Verifier further reduces verified resolution to 17.1%, with up to 40% of functionally-passing patches rejected for cryptographic or numerical-fidelity violations.

16.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-24

Stochastic Expectation Maximization for Robust State-Space Radio Interferometric Imaging

arXiv:2606.23944v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: State–space models provide a flexible framework for analyzing dynamical systems, yet they often rely on Gaussian assumptions that fail to capture heavy-tailed or outlier-prone measurement noise. We propose a robust estimation scheme for linear state–space models subject to compound-Gaussian noise, as encountered for instance in radio interferometry affected by radio-frequency interference (RFI). The method relies on a Stochastic Approximation Expectation–Maximization (SAEM) algorithm in which the standard E-step is replaced by Monte Carlo sampling of the latent states and noise texture through closed-form Gibbs updates, enabling tractable inference despite the heavy-tailed likelihood. Numerical experiments show that the proposed method significantly improves reconstruction fidelity and robustness to RFI, outperforming a Gaussian EM algorithm and even an oracle RTS smoother. These results highlight the benefits of heavy-tailed state–space modeling and SAEM-based inference in interference-dominated imaging scenarios.

18.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19

SAFE-Cascade: Cost-Adaptive Vision-Language Routing for Chart Question Answering

Vision-language models (VLMs) are powerful for chart question answering, but invoking a VLM for every query can be unnecessarily expensive when many questions are answerable from OCR text and lightweight language reasoning. We demonstrate SAFE-Cascade, an interactive system for cost-adaptive chart question answering. Given a chart image and a natural-language question, SAFE-Cascade first extracts chart text with OCR, obtains a provisional answer from a text-only language model, and then uses a learned router to decide whether to accept the text answer or escalate to a VLM. The demo exposes this decision process to users: OCR evidence, text-only answer, routing probability, escalation decision, final answer, estimated cost, and estimated latency are shown side by side. SAFE-Cascade is designed as a transparent interface for understanding when visual grounding is actually needed. Users can upload or select charts, ask questions, inspect the evidence used by each pathway, compare text-only and VLM answers, and adjust the escalation threshold to explore the accuracy-cost frontier. The system is implemented with Azure Document Intelligence for OCR, gpt-5-mini as the text-only model, gemini-2.5-flash-image as the VLM, and a Random Forest router trained on inference-time features. On a held-out ChartQA test split of 375 examples from a 2,500-example experiment, SAFE-Cascade achieves 69.1% unified accuracy with 73.1% VLM invocation, compared with 67.7% accuracy and 100% VLM invocation for the full-VLM baseline. The observed +1.4 percentage-point difference is statistically uncertain, so we interpret SAFE-Cascade as matching full-VLM performance while reducing VLM calls by 26.9% and estimated cost by 9.3%. The demonstration shows how selective modality routing can make multimodal knowledge systems more transparent, tunable, and cost-aware.

19.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

Once-for-All: Scalable Simultaneous Forecasting via Equilibrium State Estimation

arXiv:2606.13285v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We introduce Equilibrium State Estimation (ESE), a novel paradigm for simultaneous prediction, where multiple interacting systems require separate yet coordinated forecasts. Such scenarios often arise in real-world settings such as economics and healthcare modeling. Unlike existing approaches that predict one system at a time, ESE forecasts all systems in a single pass. It first estimates the equilibrium state across systems, then generates holistic forecasts based on the difference between the current state and the estimated equilibrium. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets, including currency exchange and COVID-19 spread modeling, demonstrate that ESE is at least as accurate as state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods while being significantly faster. In addition, ESE integrates seamlessly with conventional predictors, combining their accuracy with its exceptional efficiency and delivering a 10-70x speedup. With linear-time complexity, ESE scales far better than SOTA methods as the number of systems increases. Moreover, it remains accurate under diverse perturbations, establishing ESE as a fast, generalizable, robust, and scalable multi-prediction method.

20.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Effect of Lowering the Drink-Driving Blood Alcohol Limit in Scotland on Road Traffic Crashes: a Synthetic Difference-in-Differences Study

Objective: To evaluate the road safety impact arising from Scotlands 2014 reduction in the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit for drivers, and to assess whether the effect of the reform varied across different spatial contexts. Design: A quasi-experimental statistical longitudinal study using a Synthetic Difference-in-Differences (SDID) approach. Setting: Small-area panel data for Great Britain, with areas (Middle-layer Super Output Areas, MSOAs, in England and Wales and Intermediate Zones, IZs, in Scotland) classed into control and treatment groups according to whether they were exposed to Scotlands BAC reform. The control and treatment groups comprise 7088 spatial units in England and Wales and 852 spatial units in Scotland, respectively, observed over the period 2008-2019. Participants: The study primarily analyses police-reported road traffic collision data from the UK Department for Transports STATS19 system. Data were analysed at the MSOA/IZ level. This is a secondary dataset, and we therefore did not involve patients or the public in formulating the research question, determining outcome measures, or designing and conducting the study. Main Outcome Measures: The main outcome measures were log-transformed rates of total road traffic crashes, and (weekend) night-time crashes (22:00-04:00) per 100,000 population. The latter is used as a proxy measure for drunk driving. Results: Our results indicate that the reduction in the legal BAC limit led to statistically significant declines in road traffic crash rates. Aggregate estimates suggest reductions of 12.0% (95% confidence interval (CI): [-13.7%, -10.3%]) in total crashes, 15.6% (95% CI: [-20.7%, -10.2%]) in night-time crashes, and 12.4% (95% CI: [-16.7%, -7.9%]) in weekend night-time crashes. We also find substantial heterogeneity in treatment effects across spatial contexts. Effects were strongest in rural and less densely populated areas, where reductions exceeded 16% (95% CI: [-18.7%, -13.9%]) for total crashes and reached up to 29.6% (95% CI: [-35.8%, -22.8%]) for night-time and 21.4% (95% CI: [-28.3%, -13.9%]) for weekend night-time crashes. Moderate but statistically significant effects were also observed in dense urban areas, whereas effects in suburban and transitional areas were smaller and not statistically significant. Conclusions: Our analysis suggests that lowering the legal BAC limit in Scotland led to meaningful reductions in road traffic crashes, particularly during higher-risk periods and in rural areas. The findings further suggest that the effectiveness of BAC regulation may vary across local contexts, highlighting the importance of accounting for spatial heterogeneity when evaluating road safety policies.

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

Kolmogorov Regression for Robust Diffusion Policies

Authors:

arXiv:2606.18186v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Finite-dimensional (FD) diffusion policies exhibit temporal drift owing to discretization artifacts that degrade long-horizon performance (when deployed on physical systems). We introduce a backward Kolmogorov equation that lifts diffusion policies to a Cameron-Martin space – a subset of the Hilbert space. Essentially, replacing stochastic score matching with a deterministic boundary-value PDE problem. Our core innovation thrives on Gaussian measure theory whereupon the diffusion noise covariance operator is realized from a colored noise distribution which prescribes a notion of regularity on samples from the model at inference time. We train the diffusion model with a derived precision-weighted Cameron- Martin loss and a Kolmogorov residual is introduced as a PDE diagnostic during inference. These substitutions yield (i) convergence guarantees where the bound's constants depend on the effective rank of the kernel rather than action dimension, (ii) improved trajectory regularity via spectral weighting, and (iii) a deterministic failure detector without reward signals. Validation across two application domains demonstrates substantial improvements: on the PushT manipulation benchmark, the Cameron-Martin loss achieves a 17% improvement in maximum episode reward (0.95 vs. 0.78 for MSE) and 67.6% reduction in inter-step drifts during inference via the introduced residual magnitude. Similarly, on a 6-station manufacturing line with constant work-in-process (CONWIP) flow control, we achieve 28.4% lower RMSE than classical LSTM baselines; a high starvation-event recall (1.0 in test cycles), and effective bottleneck identification (Precision@1 = 1.0 in test set, 13x signal-to-noise ratio). We then certify the dispatch policies with Hamilton-Jacobi reachability theory which reduces deadlock events by 96% compared to uncontrolled dispatch over 100 simulated runs (351 events prevented).

22.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-24

Quant Convergence: Bridging Classical Value Investing and Modern Factor Models for Systematic Equity Selection

arXiv:2606.24575v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Modern finance relies heavily on complex machine learning models to find patterns in the stock market. However, as these AI models get more complicated, they often memorize short-term market noise instead of finding companies with real, lasting value. We designed this research to test if Benjamin Graham's classic value investing rules could act as a mathematical "low-pass filter" to keep these modern models in check. We built three different sets of features - pure Graham rules, modern market factors, and a mix of both - and tested them against highly complex models (XGBoost and AutoGluon) using 20 years of S&P 500 data. By applying a strict buy-and-hold strategy over a four-year test period (March 2022 to March 2026), the results showed that more complex algorithms do not always win. While the AutoGluon model captured high returns (222.68%), it suffered a substantial 39.78% drop because it bought volatile tech stocks right before the market crashed. On the other hand, the pure Graham Random Forest achieved the highest overall return (232.13%) with much less risk (1.38 Calmar Ratio). Furthermore, the Combined Random Forest successfully mixed momentum with Graham's rules, making a 202.91% return while keeping the lowest maximum drop (34.53%) of any model tested. Ultimately, this research proves that Graham's "margin of safety" isn't outdated; it is actually a highly effective way to prevent modern AI from taking on too much risk.

23.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

Agent Skill Evaluation and Evolution: Frameworks and Benchmarks

The growth of agent skills has transformed how agentic systems are built, evaluated, and deployed. As skill libraries continue to scale, rigorous evaluation becomes critical to ensuring their utility, quality, and safety in real-world applications. Consequently, the field is undergoing an emerging paradigm shift from isolated skill creation to automated, evaluation-driven skill evolution. In this survey, we systematically examine the landscape of skill evolution and evaluation beyond foundational skill creation. We categorize evolution into four distinct paradigms, spanning execution feedback, trajectory distillation, compression, and reinforcement learning, showing how each element contributes to improving skill utility and reliability. We also provide an analysis of six skill-centric benchmark categories, identifying structural gaps in benchmark coverage, trade-offs, and metric richness to advance skill research. Finally, we identify open directions for building skill ecosystems that are generalizable, efficient, and verifiably safe. The project URL is https://github.com/Cassie07/AgentSkill_Survey

24.
PLOS Medicine 2026-06-23

Parental body mass index and offspring childhood body size and eating behaviour: A structural equation modelling analysis in the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study

Authors:

by Tom A. Bond, Tom A. McAdams, Nicole M. Warrington, Laurie J. Hannigan, Espen Moen Eilertsen, Ziada Ayorech, Fartein A. Torvik, George Davey Smith, Deborah A. Lawlor, Eivind Ystrom, Alexandra Havdahl, David M. Evans Background The intergenerational transmission of obesity-related traits could propagate an accelerating cycle of obesity, if parental adiposity causally influences offspring adiposity. The extent to which intergenerational obesity associations are due to such causal effects, as opposed to genetic confounding (inheritance), is unclear. We aimed to establish whether associations between parental peri-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) and offspring birth weight (BW), BMI until 8 years of age, and 8-year-old eating behaviour are due to genetic confounding. Methods and findings Data were from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study, a prospective population-based birth cohort born between 1999 and 2009 at 50 out of 52 hospital maternity units in Norway. We compared the strength of the associations of maternal pre-pregnancy BMI versus paternal BMI during pregnancy, with offspring outcomes including birth weight and BMI assessed between age 6 months and 8 years of age, and appetite-related eating behaviour traits assessed at age 8 years via the Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ), adjusting for potential confounders including parity, parental/grandparental language group and parental age, smoking, education and income). We then used an extended children of twins structural equation model (SEM) to quantify the extent to which associations were due to genetic confounding. Up to 85,866 children (51.3% male) were included in linear regression models, whereas SEM models included up to 50,999 children. Maternal BMI was more strongly associated than paternal BMI with offspring BW, but the maternal-paternal difference decreased for offspring BMI after birth. Greater parental BMI was associated with obesity-related offspring eating behaviours. SEM results indicated that genetic confounding did not explain the association between parental BMI and offspring BW, but explained the majority of the association with offspring BMI from 6 months onwards. For 8-year BMI, genetic confounding explained 79% (95% CI [62, 95]; p = 1.9 × 10−12) of the covariance with maternal BMI and 94% (95% CI [72, 113]; p = 2.7 × 10−14) of the covariance with paternal BMI. Limitations of this study include selective recruitment and attrition, potential bias due to parental assortative mating, and that findings may not generalise beyond high-income country settings with high obesity prevalence. Conclusions We found strong evidence that parent–child BMI associations may primarily be due to genetic confounding. When considered alongside prior evidence, this finding may argue against a strong causal effect of maternal or paternal adiposity on childhood adiposity via intrauterine or periconceptional mechanisms.

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arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Quantum correlations in QBism's reconstruction program

arXiv:2606.07485v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: QBism recasts quantum theory as a normative framework for an agent's probability assignments, with the Born rule taking the form of a consistency condition known as the Urgleichung. Motivated by this perspective, qplex theories provide a broader class of probabilistic models in which the sets of valid states and measurements are constrained by QBist-inspired geometric conditions. While qplexes have been extensively studied for single systems, their implications for bipartite correlations remain largely unexplored. In this work, we investigate bipartite correlations in qplex theories by expressing joint expectation values as inner products between suitably defined $C$-vectors. This geometric formulation allows Bell-type inequalities to be studied as optimization problems over qplex-compatible probability assignments. We first analyze the CHSH scenario and show that the shared inner-product structure of the $C$-vectors restricts the maximal value to the Tsirelson bound $2\sqrt{2}$. We then turn to the three-outcome CGLMP inequality $I_{2233}$ and find that the same qplex-derived norm and inner-product constraints allow a violation of up to $\leq 2+2\sqrt(3)/3 \approx 3.1547$ versus the quantum maximum of $\approx 2.8729$, thereby exhibiting super-quantum correlations. These results show that qplex geometry captures enough structure to reproduce an important quantum bound in the two-outcome case, but not enough to recover the full set of quantum correlation constraints. The analysis therefore suggests that additional principles are needed to complete the QBist reconstruction of quantum theory.