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01.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-24

ArtiTwinSplat: Interactable Digital Twin Reconstruction via Gaussian Splatting from RGB-D videos

Deploying robots in unstructured real-world environments needs accurate, interactive models of the objects. Constructing these models at scale remains a critical bottleneck for robotic system integration. We present ArtiTwinSplat, a framework that automatically constructs articulated, photo-realistic digital twins of objects directly from RGB-D videos, requiring no CAD models, simulation assets, or manual annotations. Our method is built on 3D Gaussian Splatting that preserve geometric fidelity and photometric realism, coupled with an unsupervised articulation discovery pipeline that recovers part structure and joint kinematics from observed motion alone. With tracking and optimization stages our method provides stable, queryable digital twins that support real-time rendering, viewpoint control, and interactive manipulation. Unlike prior methods confined to simulation, ArtiTwinSplat operates directly on real-world observations and produces twins that are immediately usable by downstream robot planning and learning systems. This method offers a practical, scalable pathway toward digital twin construction, lowering the integration barrier for articulated object manipulation in embodied AI and human-robot collaboration contexts.

02.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-25

Disease-Centric Vision-Language Pretraining with Hybrid Visual Encoding for 3D Computed Tomography

Vision-language pre-training (VLP) holds great promise for general-purpose medical AI by leveraging radiology reports as rich textual supervision, yet existing methods struggle with 3D CT imaging due to inefficient visual backbones and coarse semantic alignment. To address these issues, we propose a tailored VLP framework featuring three key components: (1) a CNN-ViT hybrid encoder that replaces ViT's patch embedding with a 3D CNN backbone to efficiently capture local anatomical details while preserving global attention and compatibility with pre-trained cross-modal priors; (2) a disease-level contrastive learning mechanism using learnable query tokens to dynamically extract disease-specific semantics from full reports and align them with corresponding visual features, thereby disentangling distinct diseases within the same anatomical region; and (3) a diagnosis-aware prompt strategy that employs real clinical phrases and aggregated disease prototypes to bridge the pre-training-inference gap and enhance zero-shot diagnostic reliability. Our model achieves state-of-the-art performance on CT-RATE (84.4% AUC, +5.1%) and Rad-ChestCT (75.4% AUC, +5.4%), with even larger gains (+9.8% AUC) on a challenging 60-disease benchmark, and demonstrates strong transferability to radiology report generation, underscoring the generality and clinical utility of our approach.

03.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Generative AI for Managerial Decision-Making under Ambiguity and Sycophancy

arXiv:2603.03970v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly being integrated into complex business workflows, fundamentally shifting the boundaries of managerial decision-making. However, the reliability of its strategic advice in ambiguous business contexts remains a critical knowledge gap. To address this gap, this study compares multiple GenAI models in their ability to detect ambiguity, examines whether a systematic ambiguity-resolution process improves response quality, and investigates their susceptibility to sycophantic behavior when confronted with flawed managerial directives. Using a novel four-dimensional business ambiguity taxonomy, we conducted a human-in-the-loop experiment across strategic, tactical, and operational scenarios. The resulting decisions were assessed through a human-validated automated evaluation framework based on agreement, actionability, justification quality, and constraint adherence. The results show that our approach not only distinguishes different types of ambiguity, but also reveals how ambiguity resolution systematically changes model behavior. In particular, resolving ambiguities improved decision quality across all managerial levels, with the strongest gains observed in constraint adherence. The analysis further showed that sycophantic behavior is not uniform across models: some models challenged flawed assumptions, whereas others tended to comply with them. This study contributes to the bounded rationality literature by positioning GenAI as a cognitive scaffold that can detect and resolve ambiguities managers might overlook, while demonstrating that its artificial limitations require human oversight to ensure its reliability as a strategic partner.

04.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-24

AI Tokenomics: The Economics of Tokens, Computation, and Pricing in Foundation Models

Authors:

arXiv:2606.24616v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Tokens have become the practical accounting unit for modern foundation model services, linking information processing, computation, memory use, energy expenditure, pricing, and economic value. This paper develops a framework for AI tokenomics: the study of how tokens are generated, consumed, priced, allocated, and optimized across AI systems. We connect token-level technical costs to workflow-level production functions, enterprise resource allocation, measurement and instrumentation methods, and emerging market-design questions. The framework shows that token expenditure and economic value are distinct: value depends on marginal productivity, workflow position, hidden reasoning activity, risk, and downstream propagation effects. The paper concludes by identifying open research directions in hidden-token measurement, empirical calibration, token productivity, dynamic allocation, and token-based markets.

05.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

GMN4AD: Graph Matching Network for Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis with Test-Time Domain Adaptation using Multi-centered Structure Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects millions of older adults, with prevalence expected to rise significantly in the coming years. Early diagnosis, particularly during the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) stage, is critical for timely intervention. Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (sMRI) has emerged as a key modality for detecting AD-related brain changes, but traditional graph-based approaches often struggle with modality and inter-site heterogeneity, limiting diagnostic performance. In this paper, we propose Graph Matching Network for Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis (GMN4AD), designed to model interactions between heterogeneous brain graphs derived from neuroimaging data. Unlike conventional methods that treat each brain graph independently, GMN4AD leverages graph matching to capture cross-graph relationships, enhancing diagnostic precision. Furthermore, we introduce a test-time domain adaptation strategy that combines contrastive learning to mitigate domain shifts during inference. Extensive experiments on three public AD datasets demonstrate that GMN4AD achieves superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods, offering a robust and generalizable solution for AD diagnosis.

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

Intelligence as Managed Autonomy: Failure, Escalation, and Governance for Agentic AI Systems

arXiv:2605.27628v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As autonomous and agentic AI systems scale in robotic and human-machine environments, managing hallucination and persistent but unjustified action remains an open challenge. Rather than attributing these failures solely to model or alignment limitations, this paper explores the architectural vulnerability of unbounded autonomy - the presumption that an agent should continue operating regardless of rising uncertainty. It introduces a theory of managed autonomy that defines intelligent behavior through the formal capacity to detect epistemic drift, suspend reasoning, attempt recovery, and ultimately surrender control when reliability diminishes. We instantiate this theory via the SMARt (Self-Managing Multi-tier Autonomous Reasoning with Regulated/Revoked transitions) model, a four-layer framework featuring Stable, Meta-cognitive, Assisted, and Regulated states. By developing a timed, guarded Petri net formulation, we establish theoretically bounded properties for the system, demonstrating how architecture can formally mandate escalation, constrain invalid outputs, and ensure governance reachability under specified conditions. We further analyze how incorporating domain-specific trigger sets across varied operational settings (e.g., healthcare, robotics, etc.) can systematically preserve safety, assuming completeness and soundness criteria are met. Because these triggers are designed to be adaptive, the SMARt model accommodates the safe, controlled expansion of an agent's operational scope over time. We conclude that formalizing failure management within the autonomy lifecycle is a crucial step toward realizing reliable and governed artificial intelligence.

07.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Sub-Poissonian Statistics and Quantum Non-Gaussianity from High-Harmonic Generation

arXiv:2602.10882v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Quantum technologies are powered by platforms to generate complex non-classical states of matter or light to realize applications. We investigate the non-classical properties of high-harmonic generation in semiconductors, an emerging photonic platform. Measuring the click statistics of three double-digit orders, we evaluate witness operators to certify the non-classicality of the generated states. We show that higher-order harmonics driven by a coherent laser are squeezed and entangled. The properties of the emission are well retrieved with an entangled Gaussian state model, obtained by numerical state optimization to multiple observables. Additionally, we perform inter-order heralded measurements to engineer the quantum state of the emission. The heralded states have distinct properties, showing sub-Poissonian photon statistics. Further, we witness the generation of a quantum non-Gaussian state, a resource highly relevant for quantum information. With this, we establish high-harmonic generation as a platform for generating quantum optical resources.

08.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24

Screen-Free Haptic Breathwork with HRV-Adaptive Control, Pilot Outcomes and System Design

Vayu is a mobile breathwork system comprising an iOS companion app and Apple Watch application that delivers slow, resonant breathing using screen-free haptic cues, HRV-adaptive pacing, and reflective journaling grounded in Patanjali's five states of mind. The watchOS component provides tactile phase guidance and real-time biometric sensing (heart rate, HRV), while the iOS interface supports analytics and personalized recommendations. In a 4-6-week naturalistic pilot involving 199 adults (ages 22-65) across Canada, the United States, and India, participants engaged in daily 5-10-minute sessions guided by on-wrist haptics. Average adherence was 4.1 +/- 2.3 sessions per week, with 71% of active users maintaining at least 3 sessions per week. By week four, perceived stress (PSS-10) decreased by 2.5 points, resting heart rate declined by 7.4 bpm, and HRV increased by a median of 28.6% relative to baseline, accompanied by mood improvements. No adverse events were reported. HRV metrics are derived from Apple Watch PPG-based proxies and interpreted as relative trends. These findings suggest Vayu is effective and well-tolerated, demonstrating strong engagement and early efficacy signals.

09.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

Semantic Robustness Certification for Vision-Language Models

Vision-language models (VLMs) are now widely used in downstream tasks. However, real-world applications often expose VLMs to distribution shifts induced by semantic variation (e.g., shape, size, and style). Robustness certification determines if a model's prediction changes when transformations are applied to its input. While most certification frameworks study geometric or pixel-level transformations over inputs, this work proposes a novel framework that enables certifying VLM robustness under semantic-level transformations. Leveraging the open-vocabulary capability of VLMs, we use text prompts as semantic proxies to construct transformations parameterized by an extent that controls the degree of semantic variation. By characterizing the VLM decision boundary in closed form, our framework quantitatively certifies extent intervals for which the predicted class remains unchanged under the semantic transformation. Our framework is the first to certify VLM robustness under semantic-level variations without requiring additional data for each variation, making it practical to apply. Experiments on both synthetic and real-world data show that our framework enables certifying robustness under diverse semantic variations across scenarios.

10.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-24

Real-Time Interactive Music Generation via Data-Free Streaming Consistency Distillation

arXiv:2606.24307v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Interactive music and live performance relies on real-time human expression, but modern generative music AI remains largely absent from this domain due to its prohibitive inference latency and offline rendering paradigm. To provide pioneer musicians with a novel medium for interactive composition, we should fundamentally change these static models into dynamic, playable instruments. In this paper, we propose a framework that bridges this gap. To achieve the low latency required for live interaction without sacrificing structural coherence, we formulate distillation within a streaming autoregressive latent space. Our approach gets rid of the need for expensive paired audio-latent datasets by utilizing prompt-only inputs to synthesize teacher-guided, chunk-wise trajectories on the fly. Because live instruments require high acoustic fidelity, we introduce music-aware consistency objectives, which combine latent, spectral, and temporal-difference losses, to preserve crucial qualities like timbre, transients, and rhythmic stability during accelerated single-step streaming generation. Implemented via parameter-efficient adaptation, our distillation reduces generation steps to achieve a low real-time factor. Crucially, by operating as a continuous autoregressive stream, the system can seamlessly assimilate dynamic human inputs on the fly, allowing users to instantly steer the musical trajectory without interrupting the audio flow. Ultimately, this work recontextualizes generative text-to-music models not as passive prompt-and-wait systems, but as responsive instruments, opening new frontiers for live human-AI musical co-creation.

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

AnonShield: Scalable On-Premise Pseudonymization for CSIRT Vulnerability Data

arXiv:2606.15650v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present AnonShield, a high-throughput, on-premise pseudonymization system that combines GPU-accelerated NER, streaming processing, caching, and schema-aware configuration. Evaluated on datasets up to 550 MB (70,951 records), AnonShield reduces processing time from over 92 hours to under 10 minutes (up to 738x speedup) while achieving up to 94.2% F1-score and 96.7% recall. Our results show that scalable pseudonymization of vulnerability data is feasible without sacrificing analytical utility, enabling compliant data sharing in operational CSIRT environments.

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

Beyond Scalar Distances: Semantic Attribute Gradients from Frozen MLLMs for Visual Embeddings

Vision encoders for retrieval are typically trained with class-label supervision: each training pair reduces to a scalar that uniformly pushes the embedding apart or pulls it together, as if every visual attribute either differed or matched. A multimodal large language model (MLLM), shown the same pair, can articulate those attributes and use them to predict whether the images share a class. We propose SAGA, a framework that turns this language-grounded, attribute-aware perception into a training signal for the encoder itself. Specifically, we use Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to reward the MLLM for correct predictions on the vision encoder's tokens. Since correct predictions require those tokens to expose the specific attributes that differ or match between the pair, the gradient pushes the encoder to encode them, replacing the uniform pair-level scalar with attribute-resolved supervision. An auxiliary attention-distillation loss anchors the encoder's embedding to tokens the MLLM attended to, and a standard metric-learning loss shapes the embedding geometry for nearest-neighbour retrieval. The MLLM is frozen throughout and discarded at inference, matching the deployment cost of a metric-learning baseline. SAGA improves Recall@1 by 3 to 6 points over state-of-the-art baselines on CUB-200-2011, Cars-196, FGVC-Aircraft, and iNaturalist Aves on zero-shot image retrieval.

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

Recursively Trained Diffusion Models: Limiting Collapse Distribution and Spectral Characterization

arXiv:2606.13796v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recursive training of generative models on their own outputs can lead to model collapse, a compounding drift away from the true data distribution. Existing theoretical works bound finite-round error accumulation in the context of diffusion models, but two questions remain open:~what distribution does the recursion converge to, and how fast? We answer both, isolating a mechanism distinct from imperfect learning: even with perfect score estimation and exact sampling, the early stopping of the reverse diffusion (required for numerical stability) drives a progressive drift away from the data distribution. We prove that this recursion converges geometrically to a unique limiting distribution, which admits a closed-form characterization as an infinite mixture of increasingly Gaussian-smoothed versions of the data distribution. A Hermite spectral decomposition of this limit reveals that recursive training acts as a low-pass filter: higher-order modes, which encode fine non-Gaussian structure, are attenuated much more strongly than coarse modes. This spectral picture motivates annealed truncation schedules that progressively shrink truncation times across retraining rounds; we prove that any schedule converging to $0$ asymptotically eliminates recursive compounding. Finally, we show our idealized characterization is robust: in the presence of discretization and score estimation errors, the learned distribution remains in a Wasserstein-2 ball around the ideal limit, with mode-dependent contraction rates that contract high-order errors faster than low-order ones. We validate the theory on synthetic Gaussian mixtures and CIFAR-10.

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

Single vs. Multiple Branches in DeepONet and S-DeepONet: Network Architecture Follows Coupling in Multiphysics Systems

arXiv:2507.03660v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: `Real-time prediction of complex physical systems requires surrogate models that learn from data while representing strong multiphysics coupling. Deep Operator Networks have shown success in single-physics problems, yet their effectiveness in capturing nonlinear interactions in coupled systems (such as thermo-mechanical or electro-thermal coupling) remains underexplored. Here we pose a practical question: should the architecture of a neural operator reflect the strength of physical coupling it aims to model? We compare single-branch and multi-branch designs, in both feedforward and sequential recurrent forms, across three representative systems: a reaction–diffusion problem with heterogeneous sources, a nonlinear thermo-electrical problem with temperature-dependent conductivity and Joule heating, and a viscoplastic thermo-mechanical model of steel solidification. Single-branch networks consistently outperform multi-branch variants in tightly coupled regimes by encouraging shared latent representations, whereas multi-branch designs remain favorable for decoupled or single-physics tasks. Once trained, these surrogates deliver full-field predictions up to $1.8 \times 10^4$ times faster than physics-based solvers.

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

Physics-Distilled Neural Network enabled by Large Language Models for Manufacturing Process-Property Predictive Modeling

arXiv:2606.11605v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Predicting process-property relationships in manufacturing is often challenged by high experimental costs and the limited interpretability of complex 'black-box' models. This paper proposes a novel knowledge distillation framework designed to achieve high-accuracy predictions in data-scarce scenarios. The framework integrates analytical physics priors, which are systematically extracted from scientific literature via Large Language Models, into a privileged teacher model. We employ a Graph-Masked Attention layer to capture the complex physical dependencies among input variables showing strict setpoints or a combination of static and high-frequency temporal signatures. This privileged knowledge is distilled into a lightweight student predictor for inference. The feasibility and robustness of the framework are evaluated through a comprehensive experiment across five diverse manufacturing processes. To ensure statistical reliability, given the small dataset sizes, a repeated K-fold cross-validation technique is employed to quantify model stability and generalization. Results indicate that the proposed framework consistently achieves high predictive accuracy across all evaluated domains. Most importantly, the architecture demonstrates significant fault tolerance by maintaining robust predictive performance even in scenarios where LLM-derived analytical priors are suboptimal or incomplete. Furthermore, the student predictor achieves an inference frequency exceeding 6000 Hz, which facilitates real-time edge deployment on standard industrial hardware. This work provides a scalable solution for bridging the gap between theoretical physics and real-time industrial monitoring in data-limited environments.

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

Aligning Audio Captions with Human Preferences

arXiv:2509.14659v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Current audio captioning relies on supervised learning with paired audio-caption data, which is costly to curate and may not reflect human preferences in real-world scenarios. To address this, we propose a preference-aligned audio captioning framework based on Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). To capture nuanced preferences, we train a Contrastive Language-Audio Pretraining (CLAP) based reward model using human-labeled pairwise preference data. This reward model is integrated into an RL framework to fine-tune any baseline captioning system without ground-truth annotations. Extensive human evaluations across multiple datasets show that our method produces captions preferred over baseline models, particularly when baselines fail to provide correct and natural captions. Furthermore, our framework achieves performance comparable to supervised approaches with ground-truth data, demonstrating effective alignment with human preferences and scalability in real-world use.

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

Cinematic Compositing Using Character-Environment-Harmonized Video Generation Models

Cinematic compositing aims to integrate green-screen characters into novel environments while maintaining physical and photometric realism. Previous methods often fail to capture the complex bidirectional interactions between characters and their surroundings, which we characterize as Character-to-Environment (C2E) physical interaction and Environment-to-Character (E2C) lighting harmonization. To address this, we propose an end-to-end video diffusion framework that jointly models C2E and E2C interactions, specifically handling the challenges of interactive props. Our approach introduces a tri-mask-guided architecture with RGB-D joint denoising to ensure physically consistent interactions among the character, props, and environment. We further develop an efficient prior-driven data curation pipeline to construct high-quality relighting pairs without expensive rendering. Finally, a reference-conditioned mechanism enables controllable environment synthesis and precise prop replacement. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our framework significantly outperforms existing methods in cinematic-quality dynamic video compositing.

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

A Multi-Level Architecture for Reusable Materials Ontologies – The OntoCrafter Ceramics Ontology (OCO) as Reference Implementation

arXiv:2606.14814v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The Materials Science and Engineering ontology landscape is fragmented along multiple axes simultaneously. Horizontally: a recent survey identified 94 ontologies of which over 40 are structurally incompatible; each new application domain – ceramics, polymers, batteries, smart materials – typically restarts ontology design from scratch. Vertically: EU regulation (CSRD, CSDDD, PPWR, CBAM, R2R, AI Act, ESPR) forces material, manufacturing, supply-chain, and lifecycle data into integrated digital product passports, leaving ontologies that only address horizontal fragmentation incomplete for any contemporary consumer. And mechanistically: a vocabulary that records that BNT-BT has $d_{33} \approx 580$ pC/N stores a fact but cannot surface why – Bi-6s$^2$ lone-pair stereo-activity, anomalous Born effective charges, soft modes, defect chemistry – without a systematic explanation skeleton. We propose a multi-level modular architecture with two independent classification axes – level of abstraction (L0 bridges, L1 material-agnostic laboratory-notebook, L2 material-class-specific, L3 categorical reasoning) and consumer audience (material vs. compliance) – in which the material-specific level is internally organised by a seven-tier mechanistic-explanation skeleton (Symmetry, Energy/DFT, Thermo/CALPHAD, Kinetics, Microstructure, Defect chemistry, Bonding) applicable to any crystalline ionic oxide. The level-and-audience modularity dissolves the horizontal fragmentation, the compliance audience absorbs the vertical regulation pressure, and the seven-tier organisation of Level 2 delivers the mechanistic explanation depth. We instantiate the architecture as the OntoCrafter Ceramics Ontology (OCO v0.94): 5,196 classes across 44 modules; 167,348 OWL axioms (40,454 logical); 1,674 properties; 829 cross-ontology bridge mappings; 1,172 SHACL shapes; 163 published competency questions.

20.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Evidence of an Emergent "Self" in Continual Robot Learning

arXiv:2603.24350v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: A key challenge to understanding self-awareness has been a principled way of quantifying whether an intelligent system has a concept of a "self", and if so how to differentiate the "self" from other cognitive structures. We propose that the "self" can be isolated by seeking the invariant portion of cognitive process that changes relatively little compared to more rapidly acquired cognitive skills - because our self is the most persistent aspect of our experiences. We used this principle to analyze the cognitive structure of robots under two conditions: One robot learns a constant task, while a second undergoes continual learning under variable tasks. We find that robots subjected to continual learning develop an invariant subnetwork that is significantly more stable (p < 0.001) compared to the control, and that this subnetwork is also functionally important: preserving it aids adaptation while damaging it impairs performance. We validate this pattern across three different robots spanning locomotion and manipulation.

21.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-19

Geometric Deep Learning Reveals Ligandable and Cryptic RNA Binding Small Molecule Pockets (SMARTPocket)

RNAs are important therapeutic targets, however identifying ligandable small-molecule binding pockets remains a major barrier to RNA-targeted drug discovery. Here, SMARTPocket, an atomic-level geometric deep learning framework for predicting RNA-small molecule binding pockets directly from three-dimensional structure is introduced. SMARTPocket represents RNA as full-atom point clouds and uses transfer learning from more than 110,000 protein binding interface structures to overcome the limited number of experimentally elucidated RNA-ligand complexes. Across four established single-chain benchmarks and three broader curated benchmarks, SMARTPocket consistently outperforms existing RNA pocket predictors and general biomolecular modeling approaches. The model generalizes to apo RNA structures when conformational changes are modest, identifies cryptic ligandable pockets, and recapitulates experimentally validated binding sites in the SARS-CoV-2 frameshifting element and an RNA aptamer evolved to bind small molecules. SMARTPocket-guided docking further improves near-native RNA-ligand pose recovery and computational efficiency compared with blind docking. These results establish SMARTPocket as a generalizable framework for structure-based identification of ligandable RNA pockets and for accelerating discovery of RNA-targeted small molecules.

22.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-25

Uniform Consistency of Generalized Fréchet Means

arXiv:2408.07534v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Loss-based notions of centre on nonlinear spaces range from the Fréchet mean and power means to the geometric median and, in a limiting sense, the Chebyshev centre. To use such summaries statistically, one first needs a law of large numbers that remains valid beyond smooth manifolds and beyond a fixed choice of loss. We study generalized Fréchet means on metric spaces with the Heine–Borel property, obtained by replacing squared distance with a convex loss under a mild exponential-growth condition. We prove existence and compactness of the population mean set, establish a sharp diameter bound, obtain almost-sure consistency of empirical $\phi$-means, and derive a uniform strong law over compact classes of losses. The analysis is driven by a deterministic argmin principle together with a Glivenko–Cantelli theorem for monotone classes. For isotropic densities on Riemannian symmetric spaces, we identify the population $\phi$-mean for every strictly increasing loss for which the objective is finite, including bounded robust losses. We also illustrate the framework on spheres and on the polyhedral space of ultrametric phylogenetic trees.

23.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-12

Daily briefing: How Venus flytraps snap shut

Authors:

Softening cells enable flytraps to shut with astonishing speed. Plus, the cutting-edge science happening at the World Cup and why scientists shouldn’t ignore the Pope’s AI message. Softening cells enable flytraps to shut with astonishing speed. Plus, the cutting-edge science happening at the World Cup and why scientists shouldn’t ignore the Pope’s AI message.

24.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

SMART: A Flexible, Interpretable, and Scalable Spatio-temporal Brain Atlas from High-Resolution Imaging Data

We introduce SMART, a framework for learning a flexible, interpretable, and scalable spatio-temporal brain atlas from longitudinal high-resolution 3D medical images. Existing approaches to spatio-temporal atlas construction rely on black-box generative models that lack flexibility, limit interpretability, and struggle to scale to high-dimensional data. SMART addresses these challenges by learning a continuous disease-time atlas that decouples global group-wise disease dynamics from their patient-specific anatomical manifestation. Guided by anatomically inspired priors, SMART models interpretable global trajectories of regional progression along a shared disease timeline through region-specific differential equations. Global trajectories are further personalized to individual anatomies via dense diffeomorphic displacements parameterized by a flexible and scalable multi-scale Neural Cellular Automata. Evaluated on five longitudinal MRI datasets in Alzheimer's disease (ADNI-1/GO/2, OASIS-3, AIBL; > 1,300 subjects), SMART produces anatomically meaningful predictions of disease progression and achieves state-of-the-art forecasting accuracy and improved temporal consistency over adversarial and diffusion baselines. Our approach establishes a new paradigm for flexible, interpretable, and scalable modeling of spatio-temporal change in high-dimensional medical image time-series.

25.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

Machine Learning-based Two-Stage Graph Sparsification for the Travelling Salesman Problem

arXiv:2604.20236v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: High-performance TSP solvers such as Lin-Kernighan-Helsgaun (LKH) search within a candidate graph – a small subset of edges pre-selected for the solver – rather than over the complete graph. The two leading sparsification heuristics, $\alpha$-Nearest and POPMUSIC, each fall short of the density-coverage balance: $\alpha$-Nearest is dense with stable recall, while POPMUSIC is sparser but its recall degrades with scale. Their union closes the recall gap while remaining far below the complete graph in density, leaving room for further reduction. Existing learning-based sparsifiers score edges on the complete graph, an approach that is expensive and largely limited to Euclidean instances. We propose a two-stage method that inverts this logic. Stage~1 takes the union of $\alpha$-Nearest and POPMUSIC, achieving near-perfect recall at ${\sim}6N$ edges. Crucially, the union annotates each edge with its source provenance – whether it was endorsed by $\alpha$-Nearest, POPMUSIC, or both. Stage~2 trains a lightweight classifier on these annotated edges and prunes the lowest-scoring ones. Because dual-source edges are almost always optimal, the learning problem reduces to filtering the single-source subset – a substantially easier task than classifying all $O(N^2)$ edges from scratch. Across four distance types, five spatial distributions, and problem sizes from 50 to 500, the pipeline reduces candidate-graph density by $37$-$47\%$ while retaining ${\geq}99.69\%$ of optimal-tour edges, and matches or exceeds the coverage of recent Euclidean-only neural sparsifiers at lower density at TSP500.