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01.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-18

Cramér-Type Moderate Deviations for Engel's Series via a Martingale Approach

arXiv:2606.18866v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Let $x$ be uniformly distributed on $(0,1)$, and let $(q_n)_{n\geq1}$ be the digits of its Engel series expansion. We establish a Cramér-type moderate deviation expansion for $(\log q_n-n)/\sqrt n$. The proof is based on a martingale decomposition and asymptotic results for martingales. As consequences, we obtain a moderate deviation principle over the full range of scales between the central limit theorem and the law of large numbers, without the additional lower rate restriction required in several earlier works. We also derive a uniform Berry–Esseen bound of order $(\log n)/\sqrt n$.

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

RoTRAG: Rule of Thumb Reasoning for Conversation Harm Detection with Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Detecting harmful content in multi turn dialogue requires reasoning over the full conversational context rather than isolated utterances. However, most existing methods rely mainly on models internal parametric knowledge, without explicit grounding in external normative principles. This often leads to inconsistent judgments in socially nuanced contexts, limited interpretability, and redundant reasoning across turns. To address this, we propose RoTRAG, a retrieval augmented framework that incorporates concise human written moral norms, called Rules of Thumb (RoTs), into LLM based harm assessment. For each turn, RoTRAG retrieves relevant RoTs from an external corpus and uses them as explicit normative evidence for turn level reasoning and final severity classification. To improve efficiency, we further introduce a lightweight binary routing classifier that decides whether a new turn requires retrieval grounded reasoning or can reuse existing context. Experiments on ProsocialDialog and Safety Reasoning Multi Turn Dialogue show that RoTRAG consistently improves both harm classification and severity estimation over competitive baselines, with an average relative gain of around 40% in F1 across benchmark datasets and an average relative reduction of 8.4% in distributional error, while reducing redundant computation without sacrificing performance.

04.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-12

M\"OVE: A Holistic LLM Benchmark for the German Public Sector

We present M\"OVE (Modelle für die \"Offentliche Verwaltung Evaluieren), a holistic benchmark for evaluating large language models (LLMs) in the context of the German public sector. While LLMs are increasingly adopted in public administration, model selection remains largely ad hoc, and existing benchmarks offer limited guidance: they are predominantly English-centric, US-centric in content, and focus exclusively on task performance. M\"OVE addresses these gaps by evaluating 39 models across two complementary dimensions. Performance criteria cover summarization, question answering, and topic extraction. Governance criteria assess hallucination tendencies, energy consumption, provider transparency, and alignment with German constitutional values and knowledge about positions by German political parties. In total, we utilize ten German-language datasets, including gold- and silverstandard datasets that we constructed to reflect public-administration domains. We employ a multi-metric evaluation strategy combining classical NLP metrics, embedding-based methods, and LLM-as-a-judge approaches. Our results show that no single model dominates across all criteria: top performers differ between tasks, and model size alone is a poor predictor of quality. We further evaluate the benchmark itself, analyzing its statistical precision, LLM judge reliability, the impact of our private datasets on model rankings, the sensitivity of our results to prompt formulation, and the validity of our energy consumption estimates. M\"OVE is designed as a living benchmark under active development; results are publicly available at https://moeve.bundesdruckerei.de/.

05.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-11

Sharp log-Sobolev inequalities on finite cyclic groups

arXiv:2606.02847v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Let $\mathbb Z_n$ be the cyclic group equipped with the uniform probability measure $\pi$, and let $A_{\psi_n}$ be the Laplacian with word length \[ \psi_n(k) = \min(k,n-k). \] We prove the sharp log-Sobolev inequality \[ Ent_{\pi}(f^2) \le 2\pi(f A_{\psi_n} f), \qquad f:\mathbb Z_n \to [0,\infty), \] for every $n \ge 4$. The proof is inspired by the recent work of Frank and Ivanisvili[FrankIvanisvili2026] on a sharp log-Sobolev inequality for nearest-neighbor simple random walk. We use their cubic-majorant reduction, which turns the problem into a 3rd moment estimate; the new point is a blockwise 3rd moment estimate adapted to the word-length multiplier. The same 3rd moment argument also recovers the log-Sobolev inequality for Poisson-semigroup on the circle, first proved by Weissler[Weissler1980]. The same sharp inequalities were also obtained recently by Yao[Yao2026] by a different method.

06.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-06-22

Integrative modelling of innate immune response dynamics during virus infection

by Ramya Boddepalli, Harsh Chhajera, Rahul Roya Positive-sense RNA viruses that constitute a large class of human pathogens employ various strategies to suppress and evade host immune defenses. Understanding the dynamic interaction between the viral life cycle and immune signaling is crucial to designing effective antiviral strategies. Although significant progress has been made, quantitative models that can accurately capture the intricate interactions and the intertwined dynamics during viral infection of cells remain missing. In this study, we develop a comprehensive mathematical model that integrates the intracellular viral life cycle with key cellular innate immune pathways, including RIG-I-mediated detection and JAK-STAT signaling. The model provides mechanistic insights into long-standing observations, capturing both virus-specific dynamics and innate immune response, and the key components driving their coupled dynamics. For example, a comparison of viruses shows how the Japanese Encephalitis virus undergoes a dramatic reduction in viral load in cells, due to its rapid replication that robustly activates the RIG-I pathway, in contrast to the poor immune control of Hepatitis C virus. More importantly, our model demonstrates how virus-host interactions exhibit a sharp transition boundary behavior, where minor differences in immune strength or viral suppression capacity can determine whether infections resolve or persist. We propose that ISG mRNA translation and viral replication predominantly dictate these bimodal infection outcomes. Additionally, the model not only recapitulates IFN desensitization but also identifies the molecular players involved. We demonstrate how our model’s ability to capture IFN dynamics allows us to predict optimal timing and dosing strategies for interferon-based prophylactic therapies. Together, our approach reveals fundamental features that govern the delicate balance between the establishment of infection and immune control in RNA virus infections.

07.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

SILAGE: Memory-Efficient, Full-Gradient-Free Nonconvex Optimization for Nested Finite Sums

arXiv:2606.15832v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Empirical risk minimization on massive datasets naturally exhibits a nested double finite-sum structure, where $N=nm$ total samples are logically or physically partitioned into $n$ blocks of size $m$ (e.g., in pooled data silos, out-of-core learning, or deliberate stratification). While variance-reduced methods achieve optimal oracle complexities for nonconvex objectives, they suffer from severe scaling bottlenecks in this centralized regime. Recursive estimators, such as PAGE, require periodic global full-gradient refreshes over all $nm$ samples, which are computationally expensive. Conversely, single-loop methods, such as SILVER, avoid such refreshes but require an impractical $\mathcal{O}(nm)$ memory footprint to store a control variate for every sample. In this paper, we propose SILAGE, a variance-reduced algorithm that addresses this trade-off. By actively exploiting the double-sum structure, SILAGE eliminates periodic global full-gradient refreshes over all $nm$ components (evaluating at most one local group gradient per iteration) while requiring only $\mathcal{O}(n)$ memory. Furthermore, we provide a tight convergence analysis that avoids pessimistic worst-case Lipschitz constants. Instead, SILAGE's complexity natively adapts to the underlying data geometry via nested functional similarities: across-group ($\delta_1$) and within-group ($\delta_2$) heterogeneity. Our results improve existing state-of-the-art bounds in several practically relevant regimes.

08.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Anterior-superior hypothalamic enlargement as specific marker in episodic migraine: converging evidence from an independent discovery-replication design

Background: Growing evidence implicates the hypothalamus as a key structure in migraine pathophysiology; however, our understanding of its precise role and of the specific nuclei involved remains limited. We combined MRI data from our laboratory with publicly available MRI datasets from OpenNeuro to examine hypothalamic subunit volumes in episodic migraine and assess the specificity of these alterations relative to chronic pain conditions. Methods: Structural MRI combined with an automated atlas-based segmentation algorithm and a discovery-replication design was employed to investigate cross-sectional volumetric differences across 5 bilateral hypothalamic subunits in two independent migraine cohorts: DS1-MIG (DS1-MIG-base, n = 111 patients, n = 35 controls) and DS2-MIG (n = 27 patients, n = 31 controls). The adjusted volumes were compared between groups using MANOVA as an omnibus test, followed by Welch t-tests to test univariate follow-up. Longitudinal volumetric changes were additionally assessed in DS1-MIG participants with available follow-up scans using linear mixed models. To assess the specificity of findings to migraine, the same pipeline was applied to two chronic pain datasets, one including patients with fibromyalgia (DS-FM, n = 33 patients, n = 33 controls) and the other including patients with trigeminal neuralgia (n = 119 patients, n = 55 controls). Results: MANOVA revealed significant multivariate group differences in the discovery and replication migraine cohorts (DS1-MIG-base: = .006; DS2-MIG: = .008). Follow-up univariate analyses identified a consistent enlargement of the left anterior-superior subunit across both cohorts (FDR = .023 in DS1-MIG-base and FDR = .046 in DS2-MIG), representing the only cross-cohort replication finding. Beyond this shared signature, DS2-MIG exhibited additional significant enlargements of the right anterior-inferior and right tubular-inferior subunits. Longitudinal analyses in DS1-MIG showed that hypothalamic subunit volumes remained broadly stable over time within both migraine patients and control participants. No significant volumetric alterations were detected in the fibromyalgia or trigeminal neuralgia cohorts, either in multivariate or univariate analyses, underscoring migraine-specific findings. Conclusions: These findings provide evidence for subunit-specific hypothalamic structural alterations in migraine localized in the left anterior hypothalamic subunit. The stability of these differences over time and their absence in other chronic pain conditions suggest a migraine-specific structural organisation of hypothalamic circuitry.

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

RetailBench: Benchmarking long horizon reasoning and coherent decision making of LLM agents in realistic retail environments

arXiv:2606.15862v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents have made rapid progress on short-horizon, well-scoped tasks, yet their ability to sustain coherent decisions in dynamic long-horizon environments remains uncertain. We introduce RetailBench, a data-grounded simulation benchmark for evaluating tool-using LLM agents in single-store supermarket operation. RetailBench models retail management as a partially observable decision process and is designed to support thousand-day-scale simulations. In this environment, agents must manage pricing, replenishment, supplier selection, shelf assortment, inventory aging, customer feedback, external events, and cash-flow constraints. We evaluate seven contemporary LLMs under representative agent frameworks over a 180-day evaluation horizon and compare them with a privileged oracle policy. Results show substantial variation across models: only a small subset survives the full evaluation horizon, and even the strongest LLM runs remain substantially behind the oracle policy in final net worth and sales outcomes. Behavioral analysis attributes these gaps to incomplete evidence acquisition, surface-level decision making, and the lack of a consistent long-horizon policy. RetailBench provides a controlled testbed for studying reliable autonomy in economically grounded long-horizon decision-making.

10.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

PURe: A Plug-and-Play Product-Unit Residual Module for Vision Networks

Modern vision networks are dominated by additive local transformations, whereas explicit multiplicative local interactions remain underexplored. Product units offer a direct approach to modeling such interactions, but their use in deep architectures has been limited by optimization instability. In this work, we propose PURe, a Product-Unit Residual Module for deep vision networks. PURe is built around a 2D Product Unit with a real-valued log-domain formulation that makes multiplicative local aggregation practical within deep residual hierarchies. The resulting module serves as a drop-in replacement for native residual units. We instantiate PURe in residual CNNs for image classification and in 2D residual encoder-decoder networks for slice-based segmentation on volumetric CT data. Across Galaxy10 DECaLS, ImageNet, and CIFAR-10, PURe consistently improves residual CNNs and yields a more favorable accuracy-parameter trade-off, allowing moderately deep models to match or surpass substantially deeper ResNet baselines with much smaller parameter budgets. On the AMOS benchmark, PURe also improves slice-based CT segmentation under 3D case-level evaluation. These results show that explicit multiplicative local interaction is a practical and effective design primitive for deep residual vision networks.

11.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-14

Transposable elements as evolutionary substrates of proteindisorder in the human proteome

Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are central contributors to protein function, evolution and human disease, yet the evolutionary routes that seed new disordered segments within pre-existing proteins are still poorly understood. Sequence insertions provide a powerful mechanism for disorder expansion, but the genomic donors of inserted IDR and its long-term conformational fate remain largely unknown. Transposable elements (TEs), abundant mobile genetic elements with distinctive compositional biases, represent compelling candidates for generating disorder within proteins. Here, we systematically mapped TE-derived segments across human proteins and isoforms, and we found that these insertions are strongly enriched in intrinsic disorder. The structural consequences of their insertion are shaped by TE class and family, reflecting the sequence biases of the elements from which they originate. Recent, Primate specific insertions preferentially generate disordered segments, whereas older insertions more frequently occupy ordered structural contexts, revealing an age-dependent transition in the conformational state of TE-derived sequences. TE-containing isoforms are expressed at lower levels than TE-free isoforms, particularly when insertions are young and disorder-rich, suggesting that intrinsic disorder may constrain the cellular tolerance of newly exonized sequences. These findings identify TEs as a major evolutionary mechanism linking genome mobility to the emergence of new disordered conformational ensembles in the human proteome.

12.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

$K$-Theoretic Obstructions to Linearizing QCA Representations

arXiv:2606.19657v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Projective representations arise naturally in physics and representation theory, and determining whether they can be linearized has been a fundamental problem. In this work, we study the analogous problem for quantum cellular automata (QCA) representations, which incorporate locality constraints imposed by a metric space $X$. Over an arbitrary field $\mathbb{F}$, we develop an obstruction theory for the linearization of QCA representations, using the algebraic $K$-theory spectrum of QCA constructed in previous work of the authors. The resulting obstructions are governed by the homotopy type of the QCA spaces, from which we extract universal obstruction classes to linearization. In the complex algebraic and unitary case, we also fully compute the homotopy types of the QCA spaces over a point, a line, and a plane.

13.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-12

Data-driven subsampling rates for diffusion parameter estimation of SDEs

arXiv:2606.13615v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study the problem of diffusion parameter estimation for stochastic differential equation (SDE) models in scenarios where data and model are compatible only on specific scales that have yet to be determined. We introduce a simple and efficient method for selecting suitable rates at which given time series data should be subsampled in order to ensure that the statistical structure of the subsampled data is consistent with the behavior of the SDE model on an infinitesimal scale. Our approach is based on analyzing the statistics of the lengths of monotonically increasing or decreasing segments in the subsampled data sequence, which we refer to as monotone runs. As an analytical foundation, we prove for a large class of SDEs with additive noise that the lengths of monotone runs at an infinitesimal scale are approximately geometrically distributed with success probability $1/2$. This universal characterization is employed to derive an automated method for selecting appropriate subsampling rates for given time series data that is directly applicable in real-world scenarios and does not rely on an asymptotic framework of multiscale diffusions. The approach is demonstrated using an application from industrial mathematics concerning surrogate models for fiber lay-down curves in production processes of nonwoven textiles.

14.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

MLLMs Get It Right, Then Get It Wrong: Tracing and Correcting Late-Layer Textual Bias

When vision contradicts text, multimodal large language models (MLLMs) consistently favor text, even when images provide clear evidence otherwise. This bias poses risks for applications requiring visual grounding, yet its cause remains unclear. In this paper, we uncover a surprising finding: models often get it right initially, forming correct vision-based predictions in their intermediate layers, before changing their minds and favoring text in the final output. We call this "late-layer textual override". The visual information is encoded, it simply does not survive to the output. More intriguingly, we find that how predictions change reveals whether they're correct: 85% of failures shift toward text, while 89% of successes shift toward vision. This directional signature enables a simple but powerful intervention: when we detect a confident visual prediction being suppressed, we restore it. We propose CALRD (Conflict-Aware Layer Reference Decoding), a training-free method that recovers overridden predictions at inference time. Experiments across five MLLMs of varying architectures demonstrate up to 9.4% absolute improvements on conflict benchmarks while largely preserving standard performance, without training or external knowledge. It recovers what the model already knew but failed to preserve.

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

OGPO: Sample Efficient Full-Finetuning of Generative Control Policies

arXiv:2605.03065v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Generative control policies (GCPs), such as diffusion- and flow-based control policies, have emerged as effective parameterizations for robot learning. This work introduces Off-policy Generative Policy Optimization (OGPO), a sample-efficient algorithm for finetuning GCPs that maintains off-policy critic networks to maximize data reuse and propagate policy gradients through the full generative process of the policy via a modified PPO objective, using critics as the terminal reward. OGPO achieves state-of-the-art performance on manipulation tasks spanning multi-task settings, high-precision insertion, and dexterous control. To our knowledge, it is also the only method that can fine-tune poorly-initialized behavior cloning policies to near full task-success with no expert data in the online replay buffer, and does so with few task-specific hyperparameter tuning. Through extensive empirical investigations, we demonstrate that OGPO drastically outperforms methods alternatives on policy steering and learning residual corrections, and identify the key mechanisms behind its performance. We further introduce practical stabilization tricks, including success-buffer regularization, two-sided conservative advantages, and Q-variance reduction, to mitigate critic over-exploitation across state- and pixel-based settings. Beyond proposing OGPO, we conduct a systematic empirical study of GCP finetuning, identifying the stabilizing mechanisms and failure modes that govern successful off-policy full-policy improvement.

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

Leadership as Coordination Control: Behavioral Signatures and the Recovery-Advantage Boundary in Multi-Agent LLM Teams

Authors:

Team science holds that leadership is contingent: it helps only under specific conditions, and capable, autonomous teams may need none at all. We ask the analogous question for multi-agent LLM teams: under what measurable conditions does process-level coordination control add value, and do those conditions match what team science predicts? We use behavioral signatures (majority lock-in, exploration, recovery from an incorrect round-0 consensus) and per-action ablations, clean because each controller is an explicit action set, not a monolithic prompt. We operationalize three classical leadership styles (transactional, transformational, situational) as controllers over a shared action vocabulary (explore, revise, accept, synthesize). A matched controller with the same actions but an arbitrary rule recovers no better than majority voting, so the theory-derived rule, not the vocabulary, does the work. Across four task regimes and three open-weight model families, no controller dominates by accuracy, as the contingency view predicts: transactional control matches a shared round-0 vote on all 12 (model, regime) combinations to within 1.3pp, and gains appear only on the one combination where the round-0 majority is unreliable (llama-4-scout social; situational +8pp over flat). A recovery-advantage account, tested with four boundary probes, says a controller beats plain interaction only where the round-0 majority is unreliable, the task is recoverable, and undirected interaction does not already repair it. These regions map onto contingency theory (leadership substitutes, path-goal redundancy, the situational readiness gap), so a largely null accuracy result is what the theory predicts, not a failure of the controllers. We read process-level coordination control as a contingency to be measured and theory-mapped, not a leaderboard to be topped.

17.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-12

Reasoning Models Know What's Important, and Encode It in Their Activations

Language models often solve complex tasks by generating long reasoning chains, consisting of many steps with varying importance. While some steps are crucial for generating the final answer, others are removable. Determining which steps matter most, and why, remains an open question central to understanding how models process reasoning. We investigate if this question is best approached through model internals or through tokens of the reasoning chain itself. We find that model activations contain more information than tokens for identifying important reasoning steps. Crucially, by training probes on model activations to predict importance, we show that models encode an internal representation of step importance, even prior to the generation of subsequent steps. The internal representations of importance in different models yield high agreement on which steps are important. The representation is distributed across layers, and does not correlate with surface-level features, such as a step's relative position or its length. Our findings suggest that analyzing activations can reveal aspects of reasoning that surface-level approaches fundamentally miss, indicating that reasoning analyses should look into model internals.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Approximability limits for bounded-degree max-LINSAT and implications for decoded quantum interferometry

arXiv:2606.13570v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: For general max-k-XORSAT with $k \geq 3$, no polynomial-time algorithm can do substantially better than random guessing on worst-case instances unless $\mathsf{P} = \mathsf{NP}$: approximating beyond the random-assignment value of $1/2$ is $\mathsf{NP}$-hard. The picture changes when each variable appears in at most $D$ constraints. In that bounded-degree setting, polynomial-time algorithms can provably beat the random baseline by an additive amount of order $1/\sqrt{D}$. For Boolean instances, this scaling is known to be optimal: the matching hardness result is due to Trevisan, while the corresponding algorithmic guarantee was established by Barak et al. Whether the same holds over general finite fields, and what it implies for quantum algorithms, has not been established. We make this connection explicit and extend the hardness to max-E$k$-LINSAT$(q,r)$ with bounded degree $D$ and over arbitrary finite fields $\mathbb{F}_q$, proving that it is $\mathsf{NP}$-hard to exceed $r/q + \mathcal{O}_{q,r}(1/\sqrt{D})$. These results provide the complexity-theoretic benchmark for the bounded-degree instances targeted by decoded quantum interferometry (DQI), QAOA, and classical heuristics. Any quantum advantage on bounded-degree instances is therefore confined to the constant prefactor. We further show that in the context of DQI and on $(k,D)$-regular instances, this prefactor is sensitive to the nature of the decoder: DQI with classical decoders faces an information-theoretic $1/\sqrt{D \log D}$ barrier that prevents it from matching the hardness scaling, while DQI with quantum decoders is compatible with the $1/\sqrt{D}$ scaling – identifying quantum decoding as the key ingredient for matching the complexity-theoretic scaling with DQI.

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

DYNA : Dynamic Episodic Memory Networks for Augmenting Large Language Models with Temporal Knowledge Graphs in Continuous Learning

Large Language Models (LLMs) struggle to incorporate new knowledge without forgetting or costly retraining. We propose DYNA, a lightweight framework that augments a frozen LLM with a temporal knowledge graph where events are nodes and temporal relations are directed, timestamped edges. The graph serves as an external, updatable memory. At query time, DYNA retrieves relevant nodes via random walks and centrality measures, then augments the LLM's response. Evaluated on three temporal recall tasks, DYNA reduces catastrophic forgetting by ~7% compared to fine-tuning and improves temporal ordering by ~5% over standard RAG. Higher graph clustering coefficients correlate with better retrieval, showing that graph structure matters. Contributions: (1) episodic memory as temporal KG, (2) retraining-free LLM augmentation, (3) graph properties as predictors of retrieval performance.

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

Is Your Trajectory Displacement Safe in Long-tail?

arXiv:2606.16313v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Long-tail scenarios remain a major bottleneck for autonomous driving evaluation, even as datasets grow by orders of magnitude. Existing evaluation pipelines are rarely human-aligned, safety-aware, verifiable, and explainable at the same time: closed-loop metrics often saturate among strong planners, while unstructured human ratings can be noisy without a carefully designed protocol. We formulate planning evaluation as additional-threat detection: given a planner trajectory and an expert reference, does the planner's displacement introduce new unsafe driving behavior? We propose FluidTest, an evaluation pipeline with three components: a pairwise WebUI protocol for reliable human annotation; a taxonomy of 32 semantic threats with evidence-grounded decision graphs; and a three-agent verification system with reflection for precision and auditability. Experiments on the WOD-E2E dataset show that FluidTest produces consistent labels among trained annotators and identifies additional threats in 65% of Poutine trajectories and 51% of RAP trajectories. These results show that state-of-the-art planners can still exhibit substantial safety-relevant failures despite high Rater Feedback Scores (RFS) and low Average Displacement Error (ADE). Additional details, guidance, and code are available at https://fluidtest.web.app.

21.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-11

PhyloZoo: a unified framework for phylogenetic network analysis in Python

Authors:

Reticulate evolutionary processes (events in which lineages merge, such as hybridization, recombination, and horizontal gene transfer) are widespread across nature but cannot be represented by phylogenetic trees alone. Phylogenetic networks have therefore become an important modelling tool, yet existing software is typically tied to specific inference paradigms and provides limited support for working with multiple network representations in a unified and programmable environment. PhyloZoo is an open-source Python framework that lowers the barrier to developing practical, easy-to-use software for phylogenetic network analysis. It provides data structures and algorithms covering the main representations used in the field, together with dedicated visualization tools and robust I/O for all major phylogenetic file formats. A particular emphasis lies on semi-directed phylogenetic networks, which explicitly represent root uncertainty and have so far received limited support in existing software. By offering a shared foundation for developing interoperable tools and a combinatorial layer that supports computational proofs and theoretical exploration, PhyloZoo enables reproducible workflows for applied, methodological, and theoretical studies of reticulate evolution. Availability and implementation: PhyloZoo is implemented in Python and installable from PyPI, with source code, documentation, and examples available at https://github.com/nholtgrefe/phylozoo.

22.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-17

Limit theorems for descents and inversions of shelf-shuffles

arXiv:2510.00343v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We prove central limit theorems for the number of descents and inversions of permutations produced by shelf-shuffles. These are a model for casino card shuffling machines. We show the asymptotic normality of the number of descents in two limiting regimes depending on the ratio of cards to shelves. On the other hand, we study the inversions by employing a modification of the techniques from Islak's analysis of the statistics of riffle shuffles. In particular, we obtain a bound for the rate of convergence for inversions that is independent of the number of shelves.

23.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-11

DModE: An end-to-end framework for Differential Modification and Expression Analysis of Nanopore direct RNA sequencing data

Summary: Nanopore direct RNA sequencing (DRS) enables simultaneous quantification of transcript abundance and RNA modifications from native RNA molecules, providing a unique opportunity to study transcriptional and epitranscriptomic regulation within a single experiment. However, comprehensive analysis of DRS data remains challenging, as existing workflows typically focus on individual processing steps and often require manual integration of multiple software packages for expression analysis, modification detection, statistical testing, and visualization. Furthermore, integrated differential expression and differential RNA modification analysis at both gene and isoform resolution remains poorly supported by current workflows. Here, we present DModE (Differential Modification and Expression Analysis), an end-to-end framework for integrated analysis of Nanopore DRS data. DModE combines an Epi2ME-compatible Nextflow preprocessing workflow with a dedicated Python package for downstream statistical analysis, visualization, and reporting. The framework supports differential gene and isoform expression analysis, differential RNA modification analysis at genome and transcript level, metagene profiling, exploratory epitranscriptomic analyses, and integrated assessment of relationships between expression and modification dynamics. Results are automatically summarized in interactive HTML reports, facilitating reproducible and accessible data interpretation. By integrating transcriptomic and epitranscriptomic analyses within a single framework, DModE substantially simplifies comprehensive DRS data analysis and lowers the barrier for studying RNA modification biology using Nanopore sequencing.

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

Latent Space Reinforcement Learning for Inverse Material Estimation in Food Fracture Simulation

Realistic visual simulation of food manipulation requires accurate material parameters, yet these are difficult to measure directly and vary across the heterogeneous regions of a single food item. We address the inverse problem of estimating material parameters from a target description of fracture behavior in a non-differentiable continuum damage mechanics simulator. Using orange peeling as a test case, we train a neural surrogate on 2,000 forward simulations and compare Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES, a gradient-free evolutionary optimizer) with Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO, a reinforcement learning algorithm) across the original 9-dimensional parameter space and two learned 4-dimensional latent representations. Since different oranges have different material properties, a practical inverse system must handle arbitrary targets without retraining. We train a goal-conditioned PPO policy that learns a general inverse mapping: given any target description of peeling behavior, the policy produces a material parameter estimate in a single forward pass (8 surrogate evaluations, approximately 10ms). Operating in a normalizing flow latent space with a shared surrogate evaluator, the goal-conditioned policy achieves 0.642 actual recovery when validated through the simulator, outperforming the original parameter space by 23%. A warm-start extension that initializes CMA-ES refinement from the policy's output further improves recovery to 0.828 with 540 evaluations. These findings provide a practical framework for inverse food physics and lay groundwork for vision-driven material identification from video observations of food manipulation.

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

Semantics-Enhanced Retrieval-Augmented Time Series Forecasting

arXiv:2606.14941v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Time series forecasting models often benefit from historical patterns. Inspired by Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), recent research explored retrieving relevant historical time series segments to enhance forecasting. However, relying solely on time series similarity is often insufficient for retrieval under non-stationarity. To address this, we propose a multimodal approach: a Semantics-Enhanced Retrieval-Augmented Time Series Forecasting framework, SERAF. Unlike mainstream approaches that depend only on time series similarity, SERAF conducts dual retrieval over the time series and their self-generated textual descriptions. It retrieves two complementary sets of historical patterns and corresponding futures, which are selectively and jointly used to guide future predictions. Experiments across seven real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of SERAF in bridging numerical and semantic views of time series compared with state-of-the-art baselines.