Academic Intelligence · Curated Daily

Explore the Frontier of Global Academia

AcademicHub aggregates real-time literature from top journals and preprint platforms. Build your personal research radar and let large language models compile cross-disciplinary analysis briefings automatically.

01.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Exact log-depth preparation of highly entangled matrix product states

arXiv:2606.24475v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Preparing matrix product states (MPS) on a quantum device is a key subroutine in many quantum algorithms. The most competitive methods, based on the renormalisation group, prepare translationally invariant MPS of size $L$ and bond dimension $\chi$, up to an error $\varepsilon$, in circuit depth $\tilde O(\chi^{4}\log(L/\varepsilon))$ or $\tilde O(\chi^{6}\log\log(L/\varepsilon))$. We improve multiple aspects of these methods. First, using block-encoded correction maps, whose post-selection succeeds with constant probability, we render the preparation exact without sacrificing the scaling in $L$. Second, through a generalisation of oblivious amplitude amplification to isometries, we reduce the bond-dimension dependence, improving the depth to $\tilde O(\chi^{2}\log L + \chi^{4})$ or $\tilde O(\chi^{2}\log\log L + \chi^{4})$, and even to $\tilde O(\chi^{3}\log L)$ for incoherent preparations. Finally, we extend the framework to non-translationally invariant MPS and prove logarithmic-depth exact preparation for independent and identically distributed random tensor sequences. Confirmed by numerical studies, these results constitute, to the best of our knowledge, the most efficient exact MPS preparation protocols in the relevant parameter regimes.

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

Removing Noise, not Finding Gold: Quality Filtering for Large-Scale Pretraining

Large-scale models are pretrained on massive web-crawled datasets containing documents of mixed quality, making data filtering essential. A popular method is Classifier-based Quality Filtering (CQF), which trains a binary classifier to distinguish between pretraining data and a small, high-quality set. It assigns each pretraining document a quality score defined as the classifier's score and retains only the top-scoring ones. We provide an in-depth analysis of CQF. We show that while CQF improves downstream task performance, it does not necessarily enhance language modeling on the high-quality dataset. We explain this paradox by the fact that CQF implicitly filters the high-quality dataset as well. We further compare the behavior of models trained with CQF to those trained on synthetic data of increasing quality, obtained via random token permutations, and find starkly different trends. Our results challenge the view that CQF captures a meaningful notion of data quality.

03.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

Human-in-the-Loop Atlas-Based 3D Asset Segmentation for Interactive Content Workflows

Segmenting 3D assets into meaningful regions remains challenging, especially when segmentation criteria are application-dependent and require user control. We present a human-in-the-loop pipeline for generating a segmented 2D parameterized atlas from a 3D model for interactive media, game, and XR content workflows. Our method first selects a compact set of rendered views using a greedy set cover strategy over sampled surface points, and then supports interactive segmentation of these views with SAM~2 and Label Studio. The resulting masks are back-projected onto the model's UV parameterization to produce a unified segmented atlas that supports downstream production tasks such as segment-wise material assignment, style transfer, and semantic labeling. We assess the pipeline through a demonstration-based technical evaluation on eight cultural heritage objects. The results show that the approach can generate usable segmented atlases across diverse geometries while revealing recurring sources of manual correction, particularly fine structures, cavities, and weak appearance boundaries.

04.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

Rethinking Cross-Layer Information Routing in Diffusion Transformers

Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) have become a de facto backbone of modern visual generation, and nearly every major axis of their design – tokenization, attention, conditioning, objectives, and latent autoencoders – has been extensively revisited. The residual stream that governs how information accumulates across layers, however, has been directly inherited from the original Transformer. In this paper, we present a systematic empirical analysis of cross-layer information flow in DiTs, jointly along depth and denoising timestep, and identify three concrete symptoms of traditional residual addition, namely monotonic forward magnitude inflation, sharp backward gradient decay, and pronounced block-wise redundancy. Motivated by this diagnosis, we propose Diffusion-Adaptive Routing (\textsc{DAR}), a drop-in residual replacement that performs learnable, timestep-adaptive, and non-incremental aggregation over the history of sublayer outputs. Moreover, the proposed \textsc{DAR} is compatible with many modern Transformer enhancement methods, such as REPA. On ImageNet $256\times256$, \textsc{DAR} improves SiT-XL/2 by $2.11$ FID ($7.56$ vs.\ $9.67$) and matches the baseline's converged quality with $8.75\times$ fewer training iterations. Stacked on top of REPA, it yields a $2\times$ training acceleration in the early stage, suggesting cross-layer information routing as an underexplored design axis in diffusion modeling, one that operates orthogonally to existing representation-alignment objectives. Beyond pretraining, \textsc{DAR} can also be applied during the fine-tuning stage of large-scale T2I models and preserves high-frequency details during Distribution Matching Distillation.

05.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

HAARES Half-Split Residual Basis Routing for Deep Transformers

Authors:

arXiv:2606.06564v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Block-level residual routing makes learned residual aggregation practical by routing over block summaries, but each summary compresses an ordered sequence of attention and MLP updates into one cumulative vector. We propose \method{}, a lightweight residual basis router that keeps the cumulative block source and adds one half-split detail basis, computed as the difference between first-half and second-half residual updates. The detail basis is RMS-matched and updated online, exposing coarse intra-block trajectory information without dense sublayer-level routing. Across OpenWebText, cross-domain character-level benchmarks, and BPE-tokenized OpenWebText, the empirical pattern is depth-dependent: gains are small or mixed at shallow depth and most reliable in 48-layer models. In the 201M 48-layer setting, \method{} improves over Block AttnRes across all three seeds, while a 453M two-seed probe shows the same direction. Ablations rule out source duplication, random signed details, fixed detail-source biases, or block-count changes alone. Cost analysis shows that the method is FLOP-light but not wall-clock-free: it adds memory and routing overhead, yet its relative arithmetic cost is amortized as width grows and earlier convergence can reduce time-to-target.

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

Multimodal Ordinal Modeling of Alzheimer's Disease Severity Using Structural MRI and Clinical Data

arXiv:2606.11794v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) require accurate and scalable tools for assessing disease severity, yet current clinical staging remains time-intensive and prone to variability. We propose an attention-enhanced multimodal machine learning framework with ordinal regression for automated and interpretable AD severity staging. The framework integrates T1-weighted MRI with demographic and genetic variables and compares unimodal and multimodal architectures using ordinal and non-ordinal prediction heads. Models were trained and validated using cohort-stratified splits derived from the ADNI, AIBL, and NIFD datasets. A strictly held-out test set was constructed using subjects excluded from all training, validation, preprocessing, and hyperparameter tuning procedures, with subject-level splitting employed throughout to prevent data leakage. Among unimodal approaches, the T1-weighted MRI model achieved slightly higher adjacent-stage accuracy (0.963) and agreement with clinical staging (QWK 0.444) than the tabular model (QWK 0.433). Integrating imaging, demographic, and genetic information improved overall performance. The multimodal non-ordinal baseline achieved the lowest prediction error (MAE 0.340), whereas the ordinal multimodal model achieved the highest adjacent-stage accuracy (0.970) and strongest agreement with clinical staging (QWK 0.549). These findings indicate that ordinal formulations better capture the ordered structure of the CDR scale and yield predictions more consistent with clinical staging. Explainability analyses using Grad CAM++ and SHAP demonstrated anatomically and clinically plausible model behavior, supporting transparent decision-making. Overall, attention-based multimodal learning with ordinal regression represents a robust, interpretable, and scalable approach for automated AD severity staging and AI-assisted clinical decision support.

07.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Efficient upsampling for tensor-network and quantum-state encoded functions

arXiv:2601.03885v2 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Both tensor trains (TTs) and quantum states provide compressed representations of grid-structured data with potentially exponential compression power. We present a unified framework for upsampling data encoded in vector amplitudes, with efficient realizations in both classical TT and quantum settings. Starting from an \(n\)-core TT or an \(n\)-qubit state on a coarse grid with \(2^n\) points, the construction produces an \((n+m)\)-core TT or \((n+m)\)-qubit state on a finer grid with \(2^{n+m}\) points. In the TT setting, it supports interpolation, quasi-interpolation, augmentation, and synthesis through efficient low-rank contractions, with the added \(m\) cores retaining constant rank. For function-value encodings, the resulting interpolation satisfies an \(\ell^2\)-error bound independent of the number of added grid points, achieves exponential compression at fixed accuracy, and has a logarithmic complexity in the number of grid points. In the quantum setting, the refined state is prepared by a \(\mathrm{poly}(n,m)\)-size circuit using \(\log(p+1)\) ancillas, where \(p\) controls the smoothness of the quasi-interpolant; the corresponding error scales quadratically with the initial grid spacing. We validate our framework for tensor networks in one-, two-, and three-dimensional examples, including functions, derivatives, airfoil masks, and synthetic random fields such as three-dimensional turbulence. In particular, fractal fields can be generated directly in TT format with logarithmic memory and runtime. These results open a practical route to multiscale solvers, generative models, and geometry-aware algorithms on tensor-network and quantum platforms, with potential applications in scientific simulation, imaging, and real-time graphics.

08.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

Sao Tome and Principe on the verge of eliminating lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem: evidence from IDA impact assessment surveys

Background Accelerated efforts to eliminate lymphatic filariasis (LF) as a public health problem have been supported by the introduction of the triple-drug regimen of ivermectin, diethylcarbamazine and albendazole (IDA) in endemic settings. In Sao Tome and Principe, nationwide mass drug administration (MDA) with diethylcarbamazine and albendazole was implemented in 2018, followed by IDA in 2019 and 2020. This study assesses progress towards elimination using post-MDA impact assessment surveys conducted after cessation of treatment. Methods Cross-sectional surveys were conducted among adults aged 20 years and older in 2022 and again between December 2024 and January 2025. Circulating filarial antigen (CFA) was detected using the filarial test strip (FTS). Individuals who tested positive were examined for microfilaremia using nocturnal calibrated thick blood smear microscopy. Additionally, programme data on MDA coverage and morbidity were obtained from national surveillance records. Results Three rounds of nationwide MDA achieved high epidemiological coverage (86.4% in 2018, 74.2% in 2019 and 80.0% in 2020). The impact assessment surveys conducted in 2022 evaluated 14 132 adults, with 21 individuals (0.15%) testing positive for CFA, while the follow-up survey conducted between December 2024 and January 2025 assessed 14 653 adults and detected seven positive cases (0.05%). No microfilariae were detected among the 28 antigen-positive individuals examined using nocturnal calibrated thick blood smears. National morbidity records documented 190 cases of lymphoedema and nine cases of hydrocoele. Conclusions Infection indicators remain well below WHO decision thresholds, suggesting that LF transmission is unlikely to be sustained. Sao Tome and Principe appears to be close to eliminating LF as a public health problem. However, strengthening morbidity management services will be essential to support the preparation of the national elimination dossier.

09.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

Efficient Neural Network Model Selection for Few-Class Application Datasets

arXiv:2606.19712v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: While much effort has focused on developing and benchmarking high-performance neural networks, less attention has been given to how dataset properties, known to practitioners, can guide efficient model selection. Neural models are typically evaluated on datasets with thousands of classes, yet many real-world applications involve fewer than ten. To address this understudied but common setting, we develop a measure of classification difficulty based on data-side properties and show how it enables more efficient model selection for few-class datasets, where traditional approaches are less effective. We term this phenomenon "few-class distinctiveness". Our metric allows comparison of models and datasets 6 to 29$\times$ faster than repeated training and testing. Leveraging this insight, we extend scaled model families below the smallest published models, achieving greater efficiency at similar accuracy, for example models up to 42% smaller than YOLOv5-nano for a mobile robot task. Targeting resource-constrained applications, we demonstrate few-class model selection across mobile robot, drone, and IoT scenarios, highlighting practical gains in efficiency without sacrificing performance.

10.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Random Projections for Multi-Copy Quantum Algorithms

arXiv:2606.20238v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Estimating nonlinear properties of quantum states is a central task in quantum information science. Multivariate traces, $\mathrm{tr}(\rho_1 \cdots \rho_K)$, and nonlinear observables such as $\mathrm{tr}(\rho^K)$, for integer $K$, can be accessed through collective measurements on multiple state copies, but standard protocols based on swap tests require coherent operations on the full Hilbert space and become experimentally unfeasible for large systems. In this work, we introduce a framework for multi-copy measurements based on random projections onto lower-dimensional subspaces prior to the collective measurement, which is then performed only on the reduced Hilbert space. This procedure yields a tunable tradeoff between coherent quantum resources and statistical sampling overhead, allowing the amount of coherent processing to be matched to the capabilities of the underlying hardware. We derive explicit formulas relating the Haar-averaged projected moments to multivariate traces of the original states and analyze the sampling overhead induced by the projection procedure. Specifically, after compressing an $n$-qubit state to a reduced $q$-qubit subspace, estimating $\mathrm{tr}(\rho^K)$ requires approximately $O(2^{(n-q)(K-1)})$ copies of $\rho$, with each qubit projected out increasing the sampling cost by a factor of $2^{K-1}$. Our results establish how coherent multi-copy operations can be traded for additional state copies, enabling multi-copy quantum protocols to be optimized for the available hardware resources.

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

Shrinkage priors for Bayesian Substitute Confounders

arXiv:2606.18535v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multi-cause observational studies contain information about unmeasured confounding through the dependence structure among causes. However, literal imputation of the unobserved confounder is often more complex than learning a lower-dimensional substitute score that preserves the shared assignment variation needed for stable causal adjustment. The deconfounder (Wang and Blei, 2019) and related substitute confounder methods exploit this idea, but flexible assignment models can fit the joint distribution of the causes while producing scores that over-encode the treatment vector, collapse overlap, or capture single-cause variation. We develop a Bayesian factor assignment framework for learning sparse substitute confounders that retain coarse multi-cause dependence with shrinkage priors. The theory is stated at the level of posterior concentration, factor score contraction, and overlap-preserving assignment geometry and therefore does not rely on a particular shrinkage prior. Under these conditions, the proposed regression-adjusted estimators are consistent for mean potential outcomes when the corresponding latent variable identification assumptions hold. Shrinkage priors provide a natural tool for latent structural learning: they favour low-dimensional factors supported by multiple causes, discourage effectively single-cause factors, and induce an ordering of the latent factors through progressive shrinkage. Synthetic experiments illustrate the roles of signal strength, outcome validity, and geometry-aware regularization. In an Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) baseline analysis, sparse substitute scores recover much of the adjustment obtained by directly conditioning on invasive cerebrospinal-fluid biomarkers, while collapse diagnostics identify when fitted factors reduce to individual observed measurements.

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

HairLRM: Strand-based Hair Modeling via Large Reconstruction Models

The fundamental limitation of traditional strand-based modeling is not simply data scarcity, but the ill-posedness of inferring complex 3D fields from 2D imagery without structural constraints. This unconstrained regression leads to catastrophic failures in resolving both global occlusion (e.g., in ponytails) and local directionality (e.g., in curls), resulting in over-smoothed, plausible-but-incorrect geometries. To resolve this, we integrate the strong geometric priors of Large Reconstruction Models (LRMs) into the strand generation pipeline. Using the LRM mesh as a structural anchor, we employ a novel Dual Orientation AutoEncoder to lift coarse geometry into high-fidelity strands. By resolving vector field singularities through latent-space optimization and surface-guided refinement, our method effectively disentangles complex topological structures, setting a new benchmark for robustness and accuracy in hair reconstruction.

13.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Metacognitive Myopia in Large Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit potentially harmful biases that reinforce culturally embedded stereotypes, influence moral judgments, or amplify positive evaluations of majority groups. We propose metacognitive myopia as a cognitive-ecological framework accounting for a conglomerate of established and emerging LLM biases. Our theoretical framework posits that biased samples in the information environment cause five symptoms of metacognitive myopia in LLMs: integration of invalid embeddings, susceptibility to redundant information, neglect of base rates in conditional computation, decision rules based on frequency, and inappropriate higher-order statistical inference for nested data structures. Moreover, it posits that the two main components of metacognition, monitoring and control, could account for these five symptoms. Accordingly, we further outline how monitoring and control could be approximated technically, for instance, through hidden parallel reasoning histories that allow interactive LLMs to evaluate risks of myopic inference before generating overt responses. Our theoretical framework provides a novel perspective on flawed human-machine interactions and agentic AI and raises significant ethical concerns regarding the implementation of LLMs in organizational structures and high-stakes decisions.

14.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Faithful Action-unit Causal Reasoning for Counterfactually Faithful Emotion Explanations

Multimodal models can name the action units (AUs) behind a facial emotion, but their AU->emotion rationales are typically plausible rather than faithful: nothing forces the AUs a model invokes to be the AUs that actually drive its prediction. We cast AU->emotion reasoning as a counterfactual-consistency problem between the rationale, the label, and a structural AU->emotion causal graph G, and propose FACR, which grounds the reasoner in an independently induced, polarity-aware G and trains a counterfactual-faithfulness objective: a do-intervention on an AU that G marks causal for a class must move the prediction, while one it marks irrelevant must leave it unchanged. Faithfulness is thereby both trainable and measurable through a matching interventional metric, which we evaluate against a known causal structure, the PSPI pain-AU composition, as no existing affective-reasoning benchmark allows. We are explicit that this metric tests fidelity to the supplied structure rather than its rediscovery: it asks whether the trained reasoner invokes the AUs the structure marks causal, on held-out subjects and a second dataset. Under subject-independent evaluation on UNBC-PAIN, the objective raises the agreement between the invoked AUs and the PSPI composition from a no-objective baseline of 0.08 to 0.57, at a small detection cost; an unfaithfulness control attributes the gain to the objective. On a cross-dataset emotion transfer, the objective likewise raises fidelity to G on a seven-class task (0.50 to 0.84). Finally, we attach a language verbalizer and extend the audit to the generated text: biasing each action unit's emission by its latent activation makes the rationale faithful by construction, so that ablating an AU removes it from the explanation, a property that transfers to a second language-model backbone, whereas a freely generated rationale is unfaithful.

15.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

A Gradient-based Causal Discovery Framework with Applications to Complex Industrial Processes

arXiv:2507.11178v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: With the advancement of deep learning technologies, various neural network-based Granger causality models have been proposed. Although these models have demonstrated notable improvements, several limitations remain. Most existing approaches adopt the component-wise architecture, necessitating the construction of a separate model for each time series, which results in substantial computational costs. In addition, imposing the sparsity-inducing penalty on the first-layer weights of the neural network to extract causal relationships weakens the model's ability to capture complex interactions. To address these limitations, we propose Gradient Regularization-based Neural Granger Causality (GRNGC), which requires only one time series prediction model and applies $L_{1}$ regularization to the gradient between model's input and output to infer Granger causality. Moreover, GRNGC is not tied to a specific time series forecasting model and can be implemented with diverse architectures such as KAN, MLP, and LSTM, offering enhanced flexibility. Numerical simulations on DREAM, Lorenz-96, fMRI BOLD, and CausalTime show that GRNGC outperforms existing baselines and significantly reduces computational overhead. Meanwhile, experiments on real-world DNA, Yeast, HeLa, and bladder urothelial carcinoma datasets further validate the model's effectiveness in reconstructing gene regulatory networks.

16.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-10

Epidemiology of Cervical Precancerous Lesions: Prevalence and Predictors from Pap Smear Screening in Hawassa City Hospitals, Sidama Region, Ethiopia. Institutional-Based Cross-sectional Study

Background: Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide and remains a major public health challenge. In Ethiopia, it is the second leading cause of cancer deaths, with around 8,000 new cases and 6,000 deaths each year. Region?specific data on the prevalence and predictors of precancerous lesions remain scarce, yet such information is vital for guiding targeted reproductive health strategies. This study therefore examined the prevalence and predictors of cervical precancerous lesions among women aged 21-60 years undergoing Pap smear screening in public hospitals in Hawassa City, Sidama Region. Methods: An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 241 women attending Pap smear screening at public hospitals in Hawassa City from March to August 2025. Sociodemographic and clinical data were collected via interviews and medical records. Lesions were classified based on the standardized international framework for reporting cervical cytology results from Pap smears per the Bethesda system. Multivariable logistic regression identified predictors p

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

On the Reliability of Cue Conflict and Beyond

Understanding how neural networks rely on visual cues offers a human-interpretable view of their internal decision processes. The cue-conflict benchmark has been influential in probing shape-texture preference and in motivating the insight that stronger, human-like shape bias is often associated with improved in-domain performance. However, we find that the current stylization-based instantiation can yield unstable and ambiguous bias estimates. Specifically, stylization may not reliably instantiate perceptually valid and separable cues nor control their relative informativeness, ratio-based bias can obscure absolute cue sensitivity, and restricting evaluation to preselected classes can distort model predictions by ignoring the full decision space. Together, these factors can confound preference with cue validity, cue balance, and recognizability artifacts. We introduce REFINED-BIAS, an integrated dataset and evaluation framework for reliable and interpretable shape-texture bias diagnosis. REFINED-BIAS constructs balanced, human- and model- recognizable cue pairs using explicit definitions of shape and texture, and measures cue-specific sensitivity over the full label space via a ranking-based metric, enabling fairer cross-model comparisons. Across diverse training regimes and architectures, REFINED-BIAS enables fairer cross-model comparison, more faithful diagnosis of shape and texture biases, and clearer empirical conclusions, resolving inconsistencies that prior cue-conflict evaluations could not reliably disambiguate.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Split-Head Quantum Generative Adversarial Network for Crystalline Material Discovery

arXiv:2606.17852v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The discovery of novel crystalline materials is a critical challenge in computational materials science, often limited by the spatial representation limitations and mode collapse typical of classical generative models. Traditionally, developing Quantum GANs for continuous 3D space is hindered by the limited capacity of near-term hardware. To overcome this, we adapt a physics-informed "split-head" architecture right from the quantum trunk to explicitly decouple macroscopic lattice bounds from microscopic atomic coordinates, significantly maximizing resource efficiency. This study disentangles the contributions of quantum circuits from these architectural priors by evaluating a Split-Head Quantum Generative Adversarial Network against an architecture-matched classical ablation model. Evaluated on the highly constrained Mg-Mn-O system, the results reveal a highly nuanced performance dichotomy between the advanced models. The architecture-matched classical ablation model demonstrated superior thermodynamic precision. Conversely, the integration of quantum circuits in the SH-QGAN drove unparalleled structural breadth and latent space exploration, more than doubling the ablation's geometric validity and successfully generating novel, metastable candidates converging on the Mg2MnO4 stoichiometry. These findings clarify that while architectural separation of cell and atom generation drives strict thermodynamic precision, quantum feature mapping independently provides the spatial diversity necessary to overcome mode collapse. Both mechanisms offer distinct, complementary enhancements for the generative discovery of advanced materials.

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

Effective Dimension Governs Generalization in Quantum Kernel Vision Models

arXiv:2606.20183v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent quantum vision models-quantum vision transformers and quantum convolutional networks-report two striking but unexplained empirical phenomena: (i) ansatze with more, or more uniformly distributed, entanglement generalize better, and (ii) injecting quantum noise can improve test accuracy rather than degrade it. These observations are currently treated as curiosities, discovered by grid search and explained, if at all, by hand. We show that both are manifestations of a single, measurable quantity: the effective dimension $d_eff$ of the (noise-shaped) quantum feature kernel. Working primarily with quantum-kernel vision models-a quantum feature map read out by a kernel classifier-we give a spectral account in which entanglement structure and quantum noise are two knobs that move $d_eff$; in an overfitting regime, contracting $d_eff$ acts as ridge-like regularization. We analyze the mechanism: an exact decomposition of the depolarized kernel $K_p=(1-p)^2K+\tfrac{p(2-p)}{D}\mathbf{1}\mathbf{1}^\top$ with $d_eff(K_p)\to1$, a contraction result (and its boundary) for amplitude damping, a kernel-machine capacity bound, and a capacity/alignment risk decomposition; the monotone contraction operative in our entangled experiments is verified empirically, not proven in general. Along the one-parameter depolarizing family the collapse is instead exact by construction; we use it only to confirm the kernel decomposition to machine precision and at up to $12$ qubits, not as evidence for $d_eff$. Amplitude damping contracts $d_eff$ and lifts test accuracy by up to $+13\%$ along an inverted-U sweet spot; the effect's sign flips between the over- and under-fitting regimes; noise injection matches an explicit spectral-filtering frontier. Our results organize two reported anecdotes into a single measurable principle for designing quantum-vision models.

20.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

Restless bandits with imperfect binary feedback: PCL-indexability analysis and computation

arXiv:2606.11192v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study restless bandits with binary latent states and imperfect binary feedback, motivated by opportunistic spectrum access with sensing errors. For the associated belief-state model, we develop a partial conservation laws (PCL)-based analytical and computational framework for establishing indexability and evaluating the Whittle index, building on a verification theorem for real-state discounted restless bandits. The framework analyzes the stochastic dynamics via an associated deterministic skeleton, renewal decompositions, and combinatorics on words. It yields tractable expressions for discounted reward and resource metrics in several threshold regimes, enabling full verification of the PCL-indexability conditions there. For the remaining regime, where a complete analytic verification is not achieved in this paper, we derive efficient numerical schemes for computing the relevant marginal metrics and the marginal productivity (MP) index, which equals the Whittle index when those conditions hold. Extensive computational experiments provide strong evidence that these conditions also hold in that regime across broad parameter ranges and without the stringent parameter restrictions imposed in prior work. The experiments further show that theMP index policy typically outperforms standard benchmark policies, often by a substantial margin.

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

Hey Chat, Can You Teach Me? Structuring Socratic Dialogue for Human Learning in the Wild

Large language models are now widely used for everyday learning, but the underlying interactions are typically unstructured chats rather than following a curriculum. Unlike formal online learning systems, these interactions carry no prior record of the student, so any estimate of what the student already knows must be inferred from the dialogue itself. We show that this gap is not closed by scaling models alone. Frontier and education-tuned LLMs perform poorly when asked to tutor a student over an extended session, because doing so requires three things at once. The tutor must sequence a curriculum, conduct Socratic dialogue, and infer the student's knowledge state from that dialogue. We propose separating these responsibilities. Given a student query, our system constructs a prerequisite knowledge graph in which subtopics are nodes and dependencies are edges, and frames tutoring as deciding which node to teach next and how many dialogue turns to spend on it before moving on. A lightweight PPO policy handles this sequencing decision, while an LLM conducts the Socratic exchange at the chosen node and returns a signal of student progress. Across held-out STEM and non-STEM topics, our PPO-paired tutor outperforms heuristic baselines, frontier general-purpose models, and a model specialised for Socratic dialogue: on both the rate at which students reach full curriculum mastery and the number of turns required. Explicit curriculum structure delivers gains that scaling the underlying model does not.

22.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-23

Associations Between Social Responsiveness and Sleep Disruption are Modulated by Chronotype in Early Adolescence: Cross-Sectional and Prospective Findings from 10,108 Participants of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study

Background: Sleep disruption is prevalent in people with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism but is not clear whether it occurs as an endophenotype or secondary to other behaviours. The ABCD Study is a population-based longitudinal study that monitors the health, demography and lifestyle of over 11,000 children in the US. In this study we leverage these data to investigate whether traits consistent with autism (social responsiveness) are associated with sleep disruption independent of lifestyle and other behavioural measures. Methods: Autistic traits were assessed using the Social Responsiveness Scale at age 11, and sleep disruption and behavioural outcomes were assessed at ages 11 and 13 years using the Sleep Disturbance Scale, and the Child Behaviour Check List, respectively. Demographic, health and lifestyle-related variables were assessed by caregiver questionnaires. Regression models were applied to investigate associations between autistic traits and sleep outcomes. Results: There was a significant cross-sectional association between sleep disturbance and SRS at age 11 years old that was independent of sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic position, physical activity, sedentary behaviour and anxiety/depression ({beta} = 0.12, 95% CI (0.07, 0.17); p < 0.001), that persisted at age 13, and that was modulated by chronotype, with evening types showing a stronger association. Discussion: Social responsiveness assessed in early adolescence (age 11) were associated with sleep disruption independent of multiple confounding factors and were prospectively associated with sleep disruption at age 13 years. These findings contribute to the evidence that disruption of sleep and circadian timing may have a primary role in the neurobiological mechanisms that mediate autistic traits.

23.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-17

The Loss of Tension in an Infinite Membrane with Holes of Decaying Spatial Density

arXiv:2606.17792v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: What is the effect of randomly removing material from an infinite stretched membrane? Under what conditions can the membrane still sustain tension? This problem was introduced by Robert Connelly in connection with applications of rigidity theory in the natural sciences, and was later studied in M. V. Menshikov, K. A. Rybnikov, and S. E. Volkov, "The loss of tension in an infinite membrane with holes distributed according to a Poisson law" (2002); a discrete version was also considered in Robert Connelly, Konstantin Rybnikov, and Stanislav Volkov, "Percolation and the Loss of Tension in an Infinite Triangular Lattice" (2001). We study a mathematical framework based on a non-homogeneous Poisson point process whose intensity $\lambda$ tends to zero at infinity. The hole shapes are i.i.d.\ and independent of their locations. We show that if the intensity does not decay too quickly, then tension is still lost throughout the whole plane, as in the homogeneous model studied in 2002. Conversely, we give sufficient conditions under which complete loss of tension does not occur. Thus, both destruction and non-destruction regimes are possible even when the intensity tends to zero, indicating a phase transition in the model. The processes studied here are closely related to bootstrap percolation.

24.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-19

AgentFinVQA: A Deployable Multi-Agent Pipeline for Auditable Financial Chart QA

Financial chart question answering in regulated settings demands more than accuracy: practitioners must know which answers to trust before acting on them, and many institutions cannot send client data to external model providers. Yet existing chart-QA agents are accuracy-focused and opaque, and most assume proprietary API access; to our knowledge, none combines auditability with on-premise deployability without significant accuracy compromise. We present AgentFinVQA, a multi-agent pipeline that decomposes each query into planning, OCR, legend grounding, visual inspection, and verification, recording every step in a traceable Model Evaluation Packet (MEP) per sample. On FinMME, AgentFinVQA improves $+7.68$ pp over a primary-backbone matched zero-shot baseline with a proprietary backbone (Gemini-3 Flash; 71.24% vs. 63.56%, McNemar $p \approx 1.1 \times 10^{-16}$), and $+4.84$ pp with open-weights Qwen3.6-27B-FP8 served locally. The verifier's verdict also serves as a useful confidence signal (68.2% vs. 55.6% exact accuracy on confirmed vs. revised answers), enabling human-in-the-loop review routing. Error analysis shows that question misunderstanding, legend confusion and extraction error account for nearly two-thirds of failures and are the categories least detected by the verifier, identifying clear directions for future work. Together these results show that auditable, on-premise financial chart QA is practical and that the open-weights system keeps most of the accuracy gains while enabling full data residency. We release our code to support reproducible evaluation.

25.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-05-29

Structural and dynamic basis of NOD2 tandem CARD association and NOD1/2–RIP2 signaling complexes

by Jitendra Maharana, Aritra Bej, Debasish Biswal, Debashis Panda, Arjun Sharma NOD1 and NOD2, founding members of the NOD-like receptor (NLR) family, play a crucial role in host defense against bacterial infections. Recognition of peptidoglycan-derived ligands triggers ATP-dependent oligomerization of the NACHT domain, exposing the CARD domains that recruit the adaptor protein RIP2 via CARD–CARD interactions to activate the NF-κB signaling cascade. Although NOD1/2-RIP2 interactions and RIP2CARD filament assembly are established, the precise interfaces that stabilize hetero–CARD filaments remain poorly defined. Here, we integrate in silico structural modeling with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to elucidate structurally compatible arrangements of NOD1–RIP2 and NOD2–RIP2 hetero–CARD filaments. Our results reveal that NOD1CARD subunits form a structurally compatible homomeric scaffold via canonical (type-I–III) interfaces, accommodating multiple tiers of RIP2CARD rings at both filament termini. Meanwhile, the NOD2 tandem CARDs adopt multiple discrete conformations, reflecting a more intricate structural mechanism. In stable filament conformations, tandem CARDs converge at the type-II interface, with RIP2CARD rings stacking onto CARDa (top-down) and CARDb (bottom-up) interfaces, highlighting the structural role of NOD2CARDb in RIP2-mediated CARD–CARD interaction. In silico mutagenesis, involving charge-reversal and alanine scanning of key interfacial residues, disrupts NOD1–RIP2 and NOD2–RIP2 interactions at both top-down and bottom-up interfaces, leading to rapid interface destabilization within 0.1–0.4 μs of simulation. Together, these results reveal conserved and receptor-specific mechanisms governing NOD1/2–RIP2 CARD–CARD interactions and provide deeper structural and dynamic insights into the complex structural mechanisms for NLR-mediated inflammatory signaling.