Academic Intelligence · Curated Daily

探索全球前沿学术脉络

AcademicHub 汇聚顶级期刊与预印本平台的实时文献。定制您的专属科研雷达,利用大语言模型自动生成交叉领域文献分析简报。

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

Few-Shot Biomedical Relation Extraction with Large Language Models: A Viable Alternative to Supervised Learning?

Biomedical relation extraction (BioRE) is a key step in transforming biomedical literature into structured knowledge. However, most existing approaches rely on supervised models trained on costly annotated datasets, limiting their scalability and adaptability across relation types and domains. We investigate few-shot BioRE using prompt-based learning with large language models (LLMs) and compare two task formulations: pairwise classification, which predicts relations for individual entity pairs, and joint generation, which extracts multiple relations in a single model call. Experiments on the BioREDirect dataset reveal a clear precision-recall trade-off. Pairwise classification achieves higher recall, whereas joint generation is more precise and computationally efficient. The best-performing model achieves a micro-F1 score of 0.44, substantially outperforming previous few-shot results (0.34) while remaining below the supervised baseline (0.56). Much of this gap is attributable to a single ambiguously defined relation type. When evaluated using macro-F1, which better captures performance across relation types in an imbalanced setting, prompt-based approaches outperform the supervised baseline (0.45 vs. 0.38), particularly on rare relation types. These findings highlight the potential of LLMs for BioRE in low-resource settings and underscore the importance of well-defined relation schemas.

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

Neural ARFIMA model for forecasting BRIC exchange rates with long memory

arXiv:2509.06697v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Exchange rate forecasting remains a challenging problem, particularly for emerging economies, where the observed time series exhibit pronounced long-memory dependence, nonlinear dynamics, and sensitivity to macro-financial drivers. Classical models such as ARFIMA capture long-range persistence but fail to adequately represent nonlinear relationships, while modern machine learning approaches often neglect the underlying long-memory structure in macroeconomic series. To address this gap, we propose a Neural AutoRegressive Fractionally Integrated Moving Average (NARFIMA) model that integrates ARFIMA-based long-memory modeling with neural networks for nonlinear function approximation, while incorporating exogenous macroeconomic and uncertainty indicators. The framework provides a unified approach for capturing persistence, nonlinear dynamics, and external shocks. We establish asymptotic stationarity of the NARFIMA process and develop conformal prediction intervals for distribution-free uncertainty quantification. Empirical results for BRIC exchange rates show that NARFIMA consistently outperforms a broad range of forecasting benchmarks across multiple horizons, underscoring the importance of explicitly modeling long-memory dependence in exchange rate dynamics. The `narfima' R package provides an implementation of our approach.

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

WallZero: Mastering the Game of WallGo with Strategic Analysis

arXiv:2606.17847v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: WallGo is a recently introduced strategic board game popularized by the 2025 Netflix series The Devil's Plan. Although played on a small 7 x 7 board, its combination of stone movement and wall placement yields high game-tree complexity and intricate strategic interactions. Despite its growing popularity, WallGo remains underexplored. This paper presents WallZero, an AlphaZero-based agent for the two-player WallGo setting. We introduce tailored action and feature designs to improve playing performance significantly. In the evaluation, WallZero defeats two professional Go players who participated in this study, securing on average 1.98x more territory per game. Beyond its strength, we use WallZero to assess game fairness and identify key strategies for mastering WallGo. Interestingly, our results show that the opening used in the Netflix series yields a more balanced game. Our code is available at https://rlg.iis.sinica.edu.tw/papers/wallzero.

04.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

When AUC Misleads: Polarization-Aware Evaluation of Deepfake Detectors under Domain Shift

Recent advances in generative AI, such as diffusion models and face-swapping tools, have enabled the creation of highly realistic deepfakes, leading to real-world harms including financial fraud and non-consensual explicit content. In response, deepfake detection has become an active research area, with recent methods increasingly focusing on improving generalization to unseen manipulations. This is typically evaluated using the Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) measured separately across multiple datasets. However, such an evaluation fails to reflect real-world scenarios where detectors face a mixture of data sources and varying artifact types. To address this limitation, we introduce a novel metric, Cross-dataset AUC (Cross-AUC) that averages per-domain AUCs with a measure of prediction polarization for taking into account the robustness to domain shift. The polarization extent is quantified by the Wasserstein Distance between class score distributions. Cross-AUC not only assesses the generalization capabilities of deepfake detectors under domain shifts more realistically, but it is also interpretable as it better explains the reason behind a drop in performance. Experiments performed on seven benchmark datasets demonstrate its practical relevance.

05.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-17

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

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

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

PCFootprint: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for Vectorized Building Footprint Extraction from Aerial LiDAR Point Clouds

Building footprint extraction is a fundamental task in photogrammetry, remote sensing, and computer vision. Recent image-based methods have achieved remarkable progress in extracting vectorized footprints from high-resolution optical imagery. However, optical imagery inherently susceptible to occlusions, perspective distortions, and residual relief displacement, yielding incomplete or misaligned footprint extraction. Furthermore, the lack of explicit elevation information limits its direct applicability to Level of Detail building modeling. In this paper, we present PCFootprint, the first large-scale public dataset for footprint extraction from airborne laser scanning point clouds. PCFootprint comprises \num{33000} tiles derived from the Estonian Land and Spatial Development Board, covering diverse urban and rural landscapes. Each tile spans \qtyproduct{128 x 128}{\m} with systematically aligned vectorized footprints aligned to point clouds. The dataset includes a \num{3000} tiles cross-domain test set for evaluating generalization across geographic regions. We establish comprehensive benchmarks by evaluating mainstream methods. Experimental results reveal significant challenges including high intra-class variance, data imbalance, and noise across complex geospatial environments. We believe PCFootprint will advance future research in building modeling, urban scene understanding, and geospatial analysis. The PCFootprint dataset is publicly available at \url{https://huggingface.co/datasets/Haoyuan-Shen/PCFootprint}.

07.
PLOS Medicine 2026-05-13

Contribution of nosocomial transmission to <i>Klebsiella pneumoniae</i> neonatal sepsis in Africa and South Asia: An observational study of infection clusters inferred from pathogen genomics and temporal data

by Erkison Ewomazino Odih, Jabir A. Abdulahi, Anne V. Amulele, Matthew Bates, Eva Heinz, Weiming Hu, Kajal Jain, Rindidzani Magobo, Courtney P. Olwagen, John M. Tembo, Tolbert Sonda, Jonathan Strysko, Caroline C. Tigoi, Kyle Bittinger, Jennifer Cornick, Ebenezer Foster-Nyarko, Wilson Gumbi, Steven M. Jones, Chileshe L. Musyani, Carolyn M. McGann, Ahmed M. Moustafa, Patrick Musicha, James C. L. Mwansa, Moreka L. Ndumba, Thomas D. Stanton, Donwilliams O. Omuoyo, Oliver Pearse, Laura T. Phillips, Paul J. Planet, Charlene M. C. Rodrigues, Fatou Secka, Kirsty Sands, Erin Theiller, Allan M. Zuza, Sulagna Basu, Grace J. Chan, Kenneth C. Iregbu, Jean-Baptiste Mazarati, Semaria Solomon Alemayehu, Timothy R. Walsh, Rabaab Zahra, Angela Dramowski, Sombo Fwoloshi, Appiah-Korang Labi, Lola Madrid, Noah Obeng-Nkrumah, David Ojok, Boaz D. Wadugu, Andrew C. Whitelaw, Anudita Bhargava, Atul Jindal, Ramesh K. Agarwal, Alexander M. Aiken, James A. Berkley, Susan E. Coffin, Nicholas A. Feasey, Nelesh P. Govender, Davidson H. Hamer, Shabir A. Madhi, Mari Jeeva Sankar, Kelly L. Wyres, Kathryn E. Holt Background Klebsiella pneumoniae is the leading cause of sepsis among neonates in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Africa and Asia, contributing substantially to the overall burden of antimicrobial-resistant infections and mortality among neonates globally. Pathogen sequencing has been used to investigate case clusters and confirm nosocomial transmission in a small number of neonatal units. Here we utilise pathogen sequence data to estimate the fraction of K. pneumoniae neonatal sepsis attributable to nosocomial transmission in African and South Asian countries. Methods and findings We estimated the proportion of invasive K. pneumoniae disease involved in nosocomial transmission clusters in a given neonatal unit, using single-linkage clustering based on pairwise temporal and genetic distances estimated from bacterial whole-genome sequences aggregated from 10 contributing studies. Analysing 1,523 K. pneumoniae isolates from 27 units in 13 countries in Africa and South Asia between 2013 and 2023, we inferred 156 nosocomial transmission clusters, ranging from 2 to 188 neonates each (83 of the clusters comprised ≥3 cases). Overall, we estimated that 1,035 neonatal infections (68.0%) were part of nosocomial transmission clusters. Excluding the first infection in each cluster as a potential index case, we estimate at least 879 (57.7%) infections were acquired via nosocomial transmission. Sensitivity analyses showed that results were robust to the choice of genetic distance estimation methods and thresholds used to define clusters, and cluster estimates were stable over temporal distance thresholds ranging from 2 to 8 weeks. Isolates were mostly extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producers (90.9%) and included 172 multi-locus sequence types (STs). Fourteen STs, including several globally recognised multidrug-resistant lineages, were associated with transmission clusters at multiple units, and these were collectively responsible for two-thirds of all infections. Carriage of carbapenemase genes (adjusted odds ratio, aOR = 2.08 [95% confidence interval, CI: 1.04, 4.14]; p = 0.04) and ESBL genes (aOR = 2.48 [95% CI: 1.26, 4.90]; p = 0.006) were significantly positively associated with transmission in a logistic regression model with site as a covariate. Limitations of this study include the lack of sufficient clinical data to allow high-resolution investigation of transmission dynamics and lack of facility-level data to investigate contributors to the observed differences in transmission burden across sites. Conclusions Nosocomial transmission contributes to a substantial proportion of K. pneumoniae sepsis in neonatal care units in Africa and South Asia. Reducing transmission within these settings through improved infection prevention and control and other measures could substantially reduce the neonatal sepsis burden. A high burden of transmission clusters is associated with the same drug-resistant lineages that are recognised as high-risk clones associated with hospital outbreaks in high-income countries, indicating global connectivity of the antimicrobial-resistant pathogen population.

08.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

MeshLoom: Feed-Forward Non-Rigid Registration of Mesh Sequences

We present MeshLoom, a feed-forward registration network that directly reconstructs vertex deformations across mesh sequences. Our approach advances non-rigid registration beyond existing models, which are typically constrained by costly per-instance optimization, narrow object categories, pairwise-only inputs, or merely intermediate outputs. The network is simple and efficient, registering multiple meshes within seconds. At its core lies a topology-aware encoder–decoder design. Specifically, we first introduce a topology-aware point representation that encodes the anchor (reference) mesh's topology into its per-vertex features. This representation strengthens the network's understanding of the anchor-mesh geometry and disambiguates points that are Euclidean-close yet geodesically distant. We then propose a multi-modal encoder that fuses this anchor-mesh representation with complementary cues from each frame, such as shape latents and image features. These multi-source signals are compressed into a compact global motion embedding that captures dense inter-frame correspondence. A lightweight decoder then queries this global embedding with the anchor-mesh point representation, retrieving per-vertex deformations at target timestamps. Through extensive experiments across diverse motions and object categories, we show that MeshLoom achieves state-of-the-art results on non-rigid registration. In addition, we find that our global embedding-then-query paradigm naturally enables the network to generate deformations at intermediate timestamps, which extends MeshLoom to motion interpolation and mesh morphing. Project page: https://meshloom.github.io/ .

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

Hidden Degradation Costs in Energy-Cost-Only HEMS Optimisation: Study on Battery and PV Sensitivity

arXiv:2606.16051v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Residential battery energy storage systems (BESS) are increasingly deployed alongside photovoltaic (PV) generation to reduce household energy costs under volatile time-of-use (TOU) tariffs. Model predictive control (MPC) is a widely adopted optimisation strategy for home energy management systems (HEMS), typically formulated to minimise net energy cost, subject to physical and operational constraints. However, battery degradation is rarely embedded in the optimisation objective, meaning its cost is unquantified and aggressive; high-cycle-count strategies could incur significant losses once deployed to physical systems. This paper presents a receding-horizon mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) baseline for a UK residential HEMS, using demand data from the REFIT dataset. A 3 by 3 sensitivity study is conducted across three battery sizes and three PV array sizes, with post-hoc degradation cost estimated using the Naumann stress model and rainflow cycle counting. Results show that degradation remains constant for each battery size and can exceed energy cost savings by up to 1,060 %. These results demonstrate that energy-cost-only optimisation systematically underestimates the true system cost, motivating a degradation-aware control formulation.

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

3D-RFT: Reinforcement Fine-Tuning for Video-based 3D Scene Understanding

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards ( RLVR ) has emerged as a transformative paradigm for enhancing the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models ( LLMs), yet its potential in 3D scene understanding remains under-explored. Existing approaches largely rely on Supervised Fine-Tuning ( SFT), where the token-level cross-entropy loss acts as an indirect proxy for optimization, leading to a misalignment between training objectives and task performances. To bridge this gap, we present Reinforcement Fine-Tuning for Video-based 3D Scene Understanding (3D-RFT ), the first framework to extend RLVR to video-based 3D perception and reasoning. 3D-RFT shifts the paradigm by directly optimizing the model towards evaluation metrics. 3D-RFT first activates 3D-aware Multi-modal Large Language Models ( MLLM s) via SFT, followed by reinforcement fine-tuning using Group Relative Policy Optimization ( GRPO) with strictly verifiable reward functions. We design task-specific reward functions directly from metrics like 3D IoU and F1-Score to provide more effective signals to guide model training. Extensive experiments demonstrate that 3D-RFT-4B achieves state-of-the-art performance on various video-based 3D scene understanding tasks. Notably, 3D-RFT-4B significantly outperforms larger models (e.g., VG LLM-8B) on 3D video detection, 3D visual grounding, and spatial reasoning benchmarks. We further reveal good properties of 3D-RFT such as robust efficacy, and valuable insights into training strategies and data impact. We hope 3D-RFT can serve as a robust and promising paradigm for future development of 3D scene understanding.

11.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-16

Comparative Effectiveness and Safety of Prophylactic Vasopressors for Preventing Post-induction Hypotension in the Elderly: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-analysis

Background: Post-induction hypotension is a predictable haemodynamic hazard in older adults undergoing general anaesthesia. Prevention remains divided among volume optimisation, anaesthetic dose reduction, rescue treatment after hypotension occurs and proactive vasoactive support. Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, CENTRAL, CNKI, Wanfang and VIP from inception to 30 March 2026. Eligible studies were randomised trials of prophylactic vasoactive drugs given before, during or immediately after induction in older adults. The primary outcome was post-induction hypotension. Secondary outcomes were post-induction mean arterial pressure (MAP), systolic arterial pressure (SBP), heart rate (HR) and reported haemodynamic adverse events. Random-effects network meta-analysis was used, and confidence in network estimates was assessed using CINeMA principles. Results: Thirty-one trials including 2,821 participants were included in the revised network. Compared with placebo/control, all active agents favoured lower post-induction hypotension. The most favourable point estimates were observed for phenylephrine (odds ratio [OR] 0.17, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.01 to 2.16) and metaraminol (OR 0.19, 95% CI 0.02 to 1.53), although both were imprecise. More precise reductions were observed for methoxamine (OR 0.23, 95% CI 0.13 to 0.43), norepinephrine (OR 0.25, 95% CI 0.13 to 0.47) and ephedrine (OR 0.34, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.63). Phenylephrine ranked highest for MAP support, norepinephrine ranked highest for SBP support, and ephedrine ranked highest for HR preservation. Global inconsistency was detected for SBP but not for hypotension incidence, MAP or HR, supporting cautious profile-based interpretation. Conclusions: Prophylactic vasopressor choice during induction should be guided by haemodynamic phenotype rather than ranking alone. In the revised network, active prophylaxis consistently favoured lower hypotension, but sparse nodes produced uncertainty. Norepinephrine retained a comparatively balanced profile when vasodilatory post-induction hypotension is anticipated, phenylephrine and related alpha-agonists provided stronger pressure support when HR and cardiac-output reserve are preserved, and ephedrine was most relevant when chronotropic support is desired. Keywords: general anaesthesia; induction; hypotension; norepinephrine; phenylephrine; ephedrine; network meta-analysis; older adults.

12.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Improved Cryogenic Photodiode Optical Biasing for Low-Noise and Low-Jitter Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors

arXiv:2606.07140v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We experimentally demonstrate an improved optical biasing scheme for superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs), which employs a cryogenic InGaAs-InP photodiode (PD) as a local bias source. It is found that, under illumination from a stable external light source, this PD generates a stable photocurrent in a cryogenic environment (~2.3 K), with fluctuations in the photocurrent primarily attributed to fluctuations in the incident optical power. Furthermore, by screening and effectively blocking stray photons leaking from the PD, which give rise to background dark counts, we have achieved an SNSPD exhibiting an ultra-low intrinsic dark count rate of 1e-4 cps. Utilizing this improved optical biasing technique, our SNSPD achieved performance comparable to that obtained under conventional electrical biasing: a system detection efficiency of 80.7%, a background dark count rate of 32.6 cps, and a minimum timing jitter of 57.5 ps. These results indicate that cryogenic-PD-based optical biasing serves as a viable, low-noise, and low-jitter alternative to traditional electrical biasing. Moreover, this work offers useful design guidance for the future development of PD-based low-noise bias sources and for the construction of all-photonic SNSPD systems tailored for high-precision quantum photonics applications.

13.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Initial-state-dependent dephasing effect in non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger models

arXiv:2606.24185v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Understanding the dynamical evolution of non-Hermitian systems under extra external dissipation is essential. Dephasing, a major realistic dissipation, is conventionally considered detrimental to information processing. However, its impact on non-Hermitian systems remains largely unexplored. Here, we focus on finite-sized non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) lattice models with alternating gain and loss in real space and examine the dynamical evolution of the trace distance under pure dephasing. By tuning system parameters, this model supports phases with either parity-time or anti-parity-time symmetries, enabling us to explore the interplay between dephasing and different non-Hermitian symmetries. While the trace distance exhibits distinct dynamical behaviors across the different phases in the absence of dephasing, its response to dephasing is largely symmetry-independent but instead initial-state dependent. By varying initial states, we observe that increasing the dephasing strength can either merely accelerate the decay of the trace distance or stabilize it. Interestingly, we reveal two kinds of dephasing-induced stabilization that differ in the strong dephasing limit: a partial stabilization, where the trace distance approaches a finite value smaller than its initial value in the long-time limit, and a complete stabilization, where the trace distance remains at its initial value throughout the entire evolution. By analyzing the equation of motion, we attribute the initial-state dependent dephasing effect to the alternating gain and loss in the system and confirm its absence in Hermitian counterparts. Furthermore, in the anti-parity-time symmetry unbroken phase, we identify a continuous suppression-upon increasing the dephasing strength-of the otherwise exponential decay of the trace distance seen in the absence of dephasing.

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

PACUTE: Phonology-, Affix-, and Character-level Understanding of Tokens for Filipino

Large language models (LLMs) process text as sequences of subword tokens, which can obscure the character-level and morphological structure that underlies word formation. This limitation is most acute for languages with non-concatenative morphology, where standard tokenizers systematically misalign token boundaries with morpheme boundaries. We introduce PACUTE, a diagnostic benchmark of 4,600 tasks designed to evaluate morphological understanding in Filipino, a language characterized by productive infixation, reduplication, and diacritic-driven lexical distinctions that are typically absent from written text. PACUTE includes a hierarchical diagnostic framework of six compositional levels that localizes where morphological understanding breaks down. Evaluating open-weight LLMs and frontier commercial models, we find that open-weight models perform near chance on morpheme decomposition regardless of scale. Frontier models perform much better, often recovering individual affixes under contains-match scoring, but remain far below their character-level ceilings on compositional tasks of morpheme transformations and syllabification. These results identify productive morphological composition, rather than character access alone, as the persistent bottleneck for Filipino word-structure understanding.

15.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Global Ease of Living Index: a machine learning framework for longitudinal analysis of major economies

arXiv:2502.06866v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The drastic changes in the global economy, geopolitical conditions, and disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted the cost of living and quality of life. It is essential to comprehend the long-term implications of the cost of living and quality of life in major economies. A transparent and comprehensive living index must include multiple dimensions of living conditions. In this study, we present an approach to quantifying the quality of life through the Global Ease of Living Index that combines various socio-economic and infrastructural factors into a single composite score. Our index utilises economic indicators that define living standards, which could help in targeted interventions to improve specific areas. We present a machine learning framework to address missing data for certain economic indicators in specific countries. We then curate and update the data and use a dimensionality reduction approach (Principal Component Analysis and Factor Analysis) to create the Ease of Living Index for major economies since 1970. Our work significantly adds to the literature by offering a practical tool for policymakers to identify areas needing improvement, such as healthcare systems, employment opportunities, and public safety. Our approach with open data and code can be easily reproduced and applied to various contexts, providing transparency and accessibility for ongoing research and policy development in quality-of-life assessment.

16.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

MedicalAgentsBench for Complex Medical Reasoning: Comparing Internalized Reasoning Models versus Externalized Agent-based Frameworks

Complex medical reasoning requires integrating heterogeneous clinical evidence across multiple inference steps. Large language models (LLMs) now approach this through two routes: internalized reasoning and externalized agent scaffolding (frameworks that decompose problems collaboratively amongst multiple LLMs). To determine whether these routes are exclusive or complementary, we introduce MedicalAgentsBench, a filtered benchmark of 862 complex clinical questions drawn from the union of eight medical datasets via difficulty-aware curation and contamination screening. Evaluating three internalized reasoning models (DeepSeek-R1, o1-mini, and o3-mini), seven base models, and nine externalized agent-based methods, we find that internalized and externalized approaches each independently improve performance, and that their benefits compound: the highest accuracy is achieved by layering agent workflows onto an internalized reasoning model (i.e., o3-mini + MDAgents with 35.1%). Pareto analysis shows this combination dominates the cost-performance frontier; moreover, lightweight optimization on inexpensive models offers an entry point for resource-constrained settings. Our benchmark is at https://github.com/gersteinlab/MedicalAgentsBench.

17.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24

Cognitive and Neuroimaging Biomarker Intra-Individual Variability in Alzheimer's Disease

Background Greater cognitive intra-individual variability (IIV) reflects increased heterogeneous performance across cognitive domains and has been linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, it remains unclear whether cognitive IIV is linked to heterogeneous dispersion of regional AD pathology. Hence, we aimed to examine the association between cognitive IIV and AD neuroimaging biomarker IIV. Methods This study included participants with normal cognition (CN) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. Cognitive IIV was computed as the within-person standard deviation of five domain-specific neuropsychological test z-scores. Four neuroimaging biomarker IIV metrics were similarly derived using regional amyloid-{beta} (n = 1,021), tau (n = 719), cortical thickness (n = 2,148), and combined amyloid-tau-neurodegeneration (ATN, n = 258). Associations between cognitive IIV and each biomarker IIV were evaluated using linear regression models, adjusted for relevant covariates. Results Higher cognitive IIV was associated with greater biomarker IIV across amyloid-{beta} ({beta} = 0.039, SE = 0.014, p = .006), tau ({beta} = 0.196, SE = 0.033, p < .001), cortical thinning ({beta} = 0.036, SE = 0.008, p < .001), and ATN ({beta} = 0.176, SE = 0.043, p < .001). Interaction analyses revealed that the associations of cognitive IIV with tau IIV, cortical thickness IIV, and ATN IIV were stronger in MCI than CN individuals. Significant interactions between cognitive IIV and biomarker positivity status showed that the effect with amyloid-{beta} IIV was attenuated in A- ({beta} = 0.004, SE = 0.014, p = .78) but that the effect with tau IIV remained robust even in T- individuals ({beta} = 0.088, SE = 0.022, p < .001). Conclusion Elevated cognitive IIV is associated with greater heterogeneity in cortical dispersion of AD-related pathology, particularly in prodromal AD and in the presence of abnormal pathology. As a novel measure that captures variation in topographical scattering of AD pathological burden across the cortex, AD biomarker IIV may offer research and clinical utility beyond evaluating absolute biomarker load or thresholds.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-25

A phase-space approach for performing continuous-variable quantum teleportation with a non-Gaussian resource

arXiv:2606.25471v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present a comprehensive phase-space analysis of continuous-variable quantum teleportation employing a photon-subtracted two-mode squeezed Fock state (PS-TMSFS) as an entangled resource. We investigate the usefulness of PS-TMSFS within the Braunstein-Kimble teleportation protocol. We explain the generation scheme for the resource state and derive the analytical expression for the success probability associated with the photon-subtraction process. The Wigner characteristic function of PS-TMSFS is calculated and then employed to determine the fidelity for coherent and squeezed state inputs. The dependence of the success probability and teleportation fidelity on the squeezing parameter and beam-splitter transmissivity is analyzed in detail for both symmetric and asymmetric photon-subtraction scenarios. We find that the teleportation fidelity exhibits a strong dependence on the resource parameters and is highly sensitive to variations in the subtraction process. The photon-subtraction process modifies the non-Gaussianity of the resource state, but no substantial enhancement of the teleportation fidelity is detected. Despite the non-Gaussian character of the resource state, fidelity above the classical coherent-state benchmark is observed only for the symmetric $(1,1) $ photon-subtraction configuration in the low-squeezing regime that decreases with increasing squeezing. The remaining configurations remain below the classical threshold throughout the parameter range considered. These findings indicate that the PS-TMSFS may not be a suitable resource for continuous-variable quantum teleportation and offers insight into the limitations of this class of non-Gaussian states.

19.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Regarding Maternal Nutrition Counselling Among Frontline Health Workers in Udupi, Karnataka, India: A Sequential Explanatory Mixed-Methods Study

Background Indias maternal nutrition profile is undergoing a dual-direction shift, with persistent undernutrition coexisting alongside rising overweight and micronutrient deficiencies. Despite national efforts through Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the National Health Mission (NHM), maternal dietary diversity remains suboptimal in India. Frontline health workers (FLWs) play a central role in delivering nutrition counselling; however, gaps remain between knowledge and its translation into practice, highlighting the need to strengthen training, applied competencies, and health system support within primary care settings. Objective To assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) regarding maternal nutrition counselling among FLWs and to explore contextual factors influencing counselling delivery. Methods A sequential explanatory mixed-methods study was conducted in Udupi, Karnataka, India. In phase one, 46 FLWs- Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), Community Health Officers (CHO), and Primary Health Care Officers (PHCO) completed a validated Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis test, Spearman correlation, and exploratory multiple linear regression. In phase two, one focus group discussion with 21 participants was conducted and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results FLWs demonstrated moderate KAP scores (37.50 {+/-} 5.09), with lower scores observed in dietary diversity knowledge and counselling practices. CHOs and PHCOs had significantly higher knowledge (p < 0.001) and practice scores (p = 0.002) compared to ASHAs, while attitudes were similar across cadres. Knowledge was positively associated with practice ({rho} = 0.389, p = 0.008). Exploratory regression indicated that cadre and knowledge were associated with practice, while attitude was not statistically significant. Qualitative findings suggested that counselling was largely protocol-based and constrained by workload, limited counselling tools, economic barriers, and cultural food practices. Conclusion Despite positive attitudes towards maternal nutrition counselling, frontline health workers demonstrated gaps in knowledge and counselling practices. Mixed-methods findings suggest that counselling delivery is shaped by both provider competencies and health-system constraints, highlighting the need for implementation-focused strategies to strengthen maternal nutrition counselling in routine antenatal care.

20.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

CoCoEmo: Composable and Controllable Human-Like Emotional TTS via Activation Steering

arXiv:2602.03420v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Emotional expression in human speech is nuanced and compositional, often involving multiple, sometimes conflicting, affective cues that may diverge from linguistic content. In contrast, most expressive text-to-speech systems enforce a single utterance-level emotion, collapsing affective diversity and suppressing mixed or text-emotion-misaligned expression. While activation steering via latent direction vectors offers a promising solution, it remains unclear whether emotion representations are linearly steerable in TTS, where steering should be applied within hybrid TTS architectures, and how such complex emotion behaviors should be evaluated. This paper presents the first systematic analysis of activation steering for emotional control in hybrid TTS models, introducing a quantitative, controllable steering framework, and multi-rater evaluation protocols that enable composable mixed-emotion synthesis and reliable text-emotion mismatch synthesis. Our results demonstrate, for the first time, that emotional prosody and expressive variability are primarily synthesized by the TTS language module instead of the flow-matching module, and also provide a lightweight steering approach for generating natural, human-like emotional speech.

22.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24

Towards a Robust cell-free DNA Isolation Protocol for NGS Applications in a Clinical Molecular Diagnostics Setting

Cell-free DNA (cfDNA), released from apoptotic and necrotic cells into body fluids, represents a non-invasive source of genetic information for disease prediction, diagnosis, and monitoring. However, its low physiological abundance makes cfDNA highly susceptible to pre-analytical influences. In particular, genomic DNA (gDNA) released from lysed white blood cells (WBCs) can contaminate plasma and compromise downstream cfDNA analyses. This study evaluated the impact of different blood collection tubes and isolation methods on cfDNA stability and yield. Blood samples from 13 healthy donors were collected using cfDNA-stabilizing tubes (Cell-Free DNA BCT, Streck; S-Monovette cfDNA Exact, Sarstedt) and stored at room temperature for 1, 5, or 10 days before plasma isolation. CfDNA was extracted using either a magnetic bead-based method or a silica column-based approach. DNA quantity and quality were assessed by fluorometric quantification, automated fragment analysis, and gene-specific quantitative PCR. Streck-based workflows maintained stable cfDNA yields and characteristic mononucleosomal fragmentation profiles across all storage times. In contrast, Sarstedt tubes showed reduced cfDNA concentrations after 5 days and a pronounced increase at 10 Days, accompanied by high-molecular weight DNA patterns consistent with WBC lysis. These trends were largely independent of the extraction method. Overall, the results demonstrate that blood collection tube chemistry critically influences cfDNA integrity during delayed processing. Streck tubes, particularly when combined with QIAamp, provided the most robust and reproducible workflow for routine molecular diagnostics, whereas Sarstedt tubes produced physiologically implausible results after extended storage.

23.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Proper and improper mixed states serve as different prior beliefs for quantum state retrodiction

arXiv:2502.10030v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A mixed quantum state can be taken as capturing an unspecified form of ignorance; or as describing the lack of knowledge about the true pure state of the system ("proper mixture"); or as arising from entanglement with another system that has been disregarded ("improper mixture"). These different views yield identical density matrices and therefore identical predictions for future measurements. But when used as prior beliefs for inferring the past state from later observations ("retrodiction"), they lead to different updated beliefs. This is a purely quantum feature of Bayesian agency. Based on this observation, we establish a framework for retrodicting on any quantum belief and we prove a necessary and sufficient condition for the equivalence of beliefs. We also illustrate how these differences have operational consequences in quantum state recovery.

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

ObsGraph: Hierarchical Observation Representation for Embodied Reasoning and Exploration

Embodied reasoning and exploration are increasingly considered crucial abilities for robots operating in complex and unfamiliar environments. To accomplish tasks in such settings, an agent must identify and acquire the information necessary for the task through exploration. We propose ObsGraph, an observation-centric hierarchical scene graph that unifies scene representation, retrieval, and exploration. It retains visual evidence and organizes it into room-view-object layers: rooms provide coarse semantic anchors, views preserve contextual object covisibility, and objects store fine-grained details. On top of this representation, we perform coarse-to-fine hierarchical retrieval under a bounded budget, and crucially use retrieval outcomes to structure the exploration candidate space–activating room-level exploration, view refinement, or frontier exploration–thereby tightly coupling representation, retrieval, and adaptive multi-scale exploration. Experiments across embodied reasoning and exploration benchmarks demonstrate improved success and efficiency, highlighting the benefits of structured scene representation and more targeted information gathering driven by identified evidence gaps.

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

Dynamic Black-hole Emission Tomography with Physics-informed Neural Fields

With the success of static black-hole imaging, the next frontier is the dynamic and 3D imaging of black holes. Recovering the dynamic 3D gas near a black hole would reveal previously-unseen parts of the universe and inform new physics models. However, only sparse radio measurements from a single viewpoint are possible, making the dynamic 3D reconstruction problem significantly ill-posed. Previously, BH-NeRF addressed the ill-posed problem by assuming Keplerian dynamics of the gas, but this assumption breaks down near the black hole, where the strong gravitational pull of the black hole and increased electromagnetic activity complicate fluid dynamics. To overcome the restrictive assumptions of BH-NeRF, we propose PI-DEF, a physics-informed approach that uses differentiable neural rendering to fit a 4D (time + 3D) emissivity field given EHT measurements. Our approach jointly reconstructs the 3D velocity field with the 4D emissivity field and enforces the velocity as a soft constraint on the dynamics of the emissivity. In experiments on simulated data, we find significantly improved reconstruction accuracy over both BH-NeRF and a physics-agnostic approach. We demonstrate how our method may be used to estimate other physics parameters of the black hole, such as its spin.