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01.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

Impact of the disposable vape ban in Great Britain: a representative interrupted time-series study 2022-2026

Objective: To examine changes in vaping and smoking trends following the announcement and implementation of the disposable vape ban in Great Britain. Design: Interrupted time-series analysis of representative monthly cross-sectional data from the Smoking Toolkit Study. Setting: Great Britain. Participants: 118,946 adults ([≥]16y), including 12,042 young adults (16-24y), surveyed between Jan-2022 and Feb-2026. Main outcome measures: Changes in trends in disposable vape use among vapers, and current vaping and smoking prevalence, using seasonally-adjusted generalised additive models with comparisons against a no-ban counterfactual in which pre-announcement trends continued unchanged. Results: The proportion of vapers mainly using disposable devices began to decline following the announcement of the ban in Jan-2024, with the fall accelerating after implementation in June-2025. By Feb-2026, 5.6% (95%CI 4.6-6.9) of adult vapers and 7.1% (5.1-10.1) of young adult vapers mainly used disposables, compared with 62.0% (53.6-71.8) and 63.6% (52.7-76.7), respectively, under a no-ban counterfactual. Increases in vaping prevalence slowed post-announcement and plateaued post-implementation; by Feb-2026, prevalence was lower than the no-ban counterfactual in adults (13.6% v 18.8%; difference -5.2 percentage points, 95%CI -7.1 to -3.3) and young adults (27.8% v 39.1%; -11.3, -18.6 to -4.1). Declines in smoking prevalence stalled among adults and reversed among young adults post-announcement, before shifting downward again post-implementation; by Feb-2026, smoking prevalence was similar to the no-ban counterfactual in adults (difference +0.9 percentage points, -0.5 to +2.2) but possibly higher in young adults (+3.3, -0.5 to +7.1). Conclusions: The disposable vape ban in Great Britain was associated with substantial changes after both announcement and implementation, including a marked reduction in disposable vape use and a slowing then plateauing of growth in overall vaping prevalence. However, declines in smoking also temporarily slowed–and among young adults, reversed–after the announcement, before downward trends resumed after implementation.

02.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

Characterizing Software Aging in GPU-Based LLM Serving Systems

arXiv:2606.11916v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper proposes an empirical methodology to study software aging in GPU-based LLM serving systems. Traditional aging studies focus on CPU-centric software with relatively regular workloads; LLM serving is different, spanning a Python host and a CUDA device, handling requests whose cost varies by orders of magnitude, and relying on rapidly evolving software stacks. We run a 216-hour campaign across six co-located deployments under identical stress conditions, monitor host, device, and client metrics in parallel, and apply a statistical pipeline that accounts for autocorrelation and multiple testing. Our results reveal statistically significant memory aging in all deployments, with leak rates strongly dependent on the serving runtime and deployment configuration. Beyond these findings, we provide a reproducible framework that opens a research direction at the intersection of the software aging and rejuvenation and LLM serving communities.

03.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-23

Innate immunity associates with protection from pneumococcal colonisation, but colonisation does not confer capsule-independent protection

Nasopharyngeal colonisation with Streptococcus pneumoniae is a prerequisite for transmission and disease and represents an important immunising event. While colonisation induces serotype-specific immunity, the mechanisms underlying heterologous protection remain unclear. We developed a controlled human infection model using pneumococcal serotype 15B and investigated colonisation dynamics, immunogenicity, and cross-protection against subsequent heterologous challenge with serotype 6B. Fifty-four healthy adults were intranasally inoculated with 15B at escalating doses. Colonisation rates peaked at 31.4% with 8 x 10 CFU per naris, lower than those historically observed with 6B and 3 strains. Density was also lower than previously observed with other strains. In vitro assays demonstrated that 15B adhered more readily to epithelial cells than 6B, but was less efficiently internalised, potentially reducing attack rates and colonisation density. Colonisation with 15B induced capsular polysaccharide-specific serum IgG, but baseline humoral immune measures did not predict protection from acquisition. Prior colonisation with 15B did not reduce acquisition of 6B upon re-challenge. Analysis of nasal microbiopsy samples revealed distinct innate activation signatures. Resistance to colonisation was associated with elevated baseline MIP-1 and MIP-1{beta} responses upon in vitro stimulation, whereas carriage was associated with enhanced chemokine and IL-6 responses. Local innate immune activation, rather than circulating antibody responses alone, may therefore contribute to colonisation control. We demonstrate that experimental colonisation with 15B does not confer heterologous protection against 6B and highlight the importance of mucosal innate immune conditioning in serotype-independent defence. Strategies enhancing nasal innate immune recruitment and activation may be required for broader protection against pneumococcal colonisation.

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

Beyond the Autoregressive Horizon: A Comprehensive Survey of Diffusion Models, World Modelling, and State Space Models for Code

arXiv:2606.23690v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Autoregressive (AR) language models have driven significant progress in automated software engineering, enabling powerful code generation and assistance systems. However, the next-token prediction paradigm introduces structural limitations for code reasoning, including restricted global planning, challenges in maintaining long-range dependencies, and limited grounding in program execution semantics. Noting the heavy skewness of existing literature towards AR models, we discuss emerging paradigms that could potentially overcome the logic and scaling bottlenecks of next-token prediction by unlocking next-generation architectural capabilities for code intelligence. Specifically, we discuss the potential of Diffusion Models, which generate code via holistic denoising that captures long-range syntactic constraints often missed by AR models. We also discuss Code World Models (CWMs), which simulate execution states to support reasoning, and State Space Models (SSMs), which provide linear-time efficiency for massive contexts. By connecting these developments with findings from cognitive neuroscience, we outline directions for developing "System 2" code generation agents.

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

The Geometry of Admissible Short Selling in Discrete-Time Stochastic Portfolio Theory

arXiv:2606.11191v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: While discrete-time Stochastic Portfolio Theory (SPT) provides a robust framework for market analysis, existing work on functional generation has predominantly focused on long-only portfolios defined on the entire unit simplex. This paper extends the geometric framework of functional generation to the broader class of bankruptcy-proof long-short portfolios defined on local market state spaces. We establish that, within this admissible setting, pseudo-arbitrage is fully characterized by the concavity of the generating function on the market state space, thereby relaxing the usual global domain requirement. A central contribution of this work is a geometric characterization of the short-selling mechanism. We prove that the presence of short selling is equivalent to the negativity of the maximal concave extension of the generating potential. This phenomenon is linked to the steepness of the logarithmic gradient as the market approaches a zero boundary nested inside the simplex. To systematically exploit this mechanism, we introduce the barycentric scaling transformation, a constructive methodology that maps classical long-only generating functions onto restricted domains to engineer admissible strategies with controlled short-selling exposure. Finally, through the analysis of specific shrunken portfolios, we identify a geometric phase transition: under suitable boundary conditions, admissible strategies exhibit a long-only core and a short-selling region in a qualitative sense (without asserting an exact partition of the state space). This provides a unified geometric perspective on relative arbitrage beyond the long-only constraint.

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

BAFIS: Dataset + Framework to assess occupational Bias and Human Preference in modern Text-to-image Models

Generative artificial intelligence has the potential to improve productivity and transform the production of creative content. However, existing research indicates that image generation models are significantly influenced by biases. This work investigates the inherent biases and language-induced biases present in text-to-image models within the context of occupation-related image generation, complementing established metrics with human preference feedback. We present a comprehensive evaluation of five current text-to-image models: Midjourney v6.1, Stable Diffusion 3 Medium, DALL-E 3, Playground v2.5, and FLUX.1-dev , focusing on gender and ethnicity bias, image quality, and prompt alignment. To facilitate this evaluation, we developed the "Battle-Arena for Fair Image Synthesis" (BAFIS), a platform designed to collect human feedback on bias in generated images. Furthermore, we created a dataset comprising 21,140 synthetic images generated using multilingual prompts, which serves as a basis for our analysis. We further place our results within a broader social context by comparing them to official statistics from the German Federal Employment Agency. Our findings reveal systematic biases in text-to-image models, with established evaluation metrics in partial correlation with subjective user ratings. Thus, our research emphasizes the need for including human preferences to develop fairer and more inclusive text-to-image models.

07.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

A Technical Taxonomy of LLM Agent Communication Protocols

arXiv:2606.19135v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) advance and multi-agent systems aim to overcome the limits of standalone agents, robust communication protocols are becoming essential infrastructure for distributed agent networks. Nonetheless, the fragmented protocol landscape presents a significant interoperability challenge. This study develops a technical taxonomy to classify and analyze LLM agent communication protocols. Following an established iterative method, we defined the taxonomy's purpose, meta-characteristic, and ending conditions, then performed five iterations, three empirical-to-conceptual and two conceptual-to-empirical, on nine actively maintained open-source protocols with demonstrable adoption. The taxonomy comprises five dimensions: counterparty, payload, interaction state, discovery mechanism, and schema flexibility. Classification reveals recurring architectural patterns: all sampled agent-to-agent protocols combine hybrid payloads with session-state persistence; most protocols support multiple predefined schemas, and two negotiate schemas at runtime, indicating a trend toward schema flexibility; decentralized discovery remains rare. Analysis suggests short-term convergence pressure toward protocols unifying agent-to-agent and agent-to-context (tool and data) communication. Long-term, however, no single protocol is likely to maximize versatility, efficiency, and portability simultaneously. The field will more likely evolve toward a federated, layered protocol stack. The framework guides protocol selection and highlights open research gaps such as privacy and policy enforcement.}

08.
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.

09.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

A Water Efficiency Dataset for African Data Centers

arXiv:2412.03716v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) computing and data centers consume large amounts of freshwater, both directly for cooling and indirectly for electricity generation. While most attention has been paid to developed countries such as the U.S., this paper presents the first-of-its-kind dataset that combines nation-level weather and electricity generation data to estimate water usage effectiveness for data centers in 41 African countries across five different climate regions. We also use our dataset to evaluate and estimate the water consumption of inference on two large language models (i.e., Llama-3-70B and GPT-4) in 11 selected African countries. Our estimates suggest that writing a 10-page report using Llama-3-70B could consume as much as {0.66 liters} of water, while the water consumption by GPT-4 for the same task may go up to about {59 liters}. For writing a medium-length email of 120-200 words, Llama-3-70B and GPT-4 could consume about {0.13 liters} and {2.9 liters} of water, respectively. All the numbers for generative model inference tasks are based on public information available in 2024, when we initially prepared the analysis. Since then, AI inference systems have improved substantially. For example, recent disclosures suggest that energy efficiency improved by more than 30x between May 2024 and May 2025. Accordingly, our 2024 estimates should be interpreted as historical reference values rather than as representative of current performance. Interestingly, given the same AI model, 9 of the 11 selected African countries consume less water than the global average, mainly because of lower water intensities for electricity generation.

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

Spectral Evolution-Guided Token Pruning in Multimodal Large Language Models

Reducing visual token redundancy is critical for accelerating Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) without degrading cross-modal reasoning performance. Existing token pruning methods typically rely on single-layer signals, such as attention scores or token similarities, which overlook the cross-layer transformation of visual representations and may exhibit positional bias in multimodal token sequences. To address this limitation, we propose a training-free token pruning framework based on Cross-Layer Spectral Evolution (CLSE). Instead of measuring token importance from single-layer feature magnitudes, CLSE quantifies how token representations evolve across Transformer layers in the frequency domain. This evolution reflects the transition from high-frequency structural details to low-frequency semantic abstractions. We observe that tokens with stronger spectral redistribution across layers are more likely to be semantically active and should therefore be preserved. By modeling cross-layer token dynamics, CLSE provides a stable importance criterion that mitigates positional bias. Extensive experiments on both image and video benchmarks demonstrate that CLSE achieves a superior trade-off between efficiency and accuracy under aggressive token reduction. Across multiple MLLMs, CLSE reduces FLOPs, KV cache memory, and latency while maintaining competitive or improved performance.

11.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Grounded Inference: Principles for Deterministically Encapsulated Generative Models

arXiv:2606.19753v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The incorporation of generative models into traditional computational systems presents both enormous opportunity and tremendous peril. Although many early adopters have realized these perils at great expense, the field still requires foundational frameworks to de-risk incorporation of AI into traditional systems. This manuscript establishes this foundation through the definition of four specific primitives of AI blended architecture, designed to enable deterministic encapsulation of probabilistic models. It further establishes two overarching anti-patterns broadly represented across industry to serve as warnings for engineers in this field. This framework was designed to enable successful integration of AI into traditional systems while providing a foundation upon which generative model providers could build the next generation of generative model interfaces.

12.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Robustness without Wrinkles: Parallel Simulation and Robust MPC for Certified Deformable Manipulation

arXiv:2606.14188v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present CORD-SLS, a real-time control method for safe deformable object manipulation, with a focus on ropes and cloth. At its core is a GPU-parallel differentiable simulator with contact smoothing which enables efficient gradient-based planning through intermittent contact. To robustly satisfy constraints under model and sensing uncertainty, we develop a real-time, GPU-parallel output-feedback robust model predictive control (MPC) algorithm that plans with this simulator. We further show that the simulator accelerates model-based RL for training neural manipulation policies. To improve real-world robustness, we use conformal prediction to calibrate visual-feedback and perception-error bounds for MPC, producing reachable tubes that enable high-probability safe control. We evaluate CORD-SLS on high-dimensional, contact-rich rope and cloth manipulation tasks in simulation and hardware, including obstacle avoidance, routing, folding, and smoothing. Across settings, CORD-SLS achieves millisecond-speed planning, exceeding baselines in safety, speed, and task success.

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

DiRecT: Safe Diffusion-Based Planning via Receding-Horizon Denoising

arXiv:2606.15359v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Diffusion models have emerged as powerful tools for planning and control by learning multimodal distributions over actions and trajectories. Yet reliable inference-time safety enforcement remains a key barrier to their deployment in safety-critical tasks. Existing approaches typically project each denoising iterate onto the feasible set, even though constraints are defined only on the final clean trajectory. Enforcing feasibility on noisy intermediate samples can therefore overconstrain the sampling dynamics, substantially degrading sample quality. To address this limitation, we introduce DiRecT (Diffusion-based planning via Receding-horizon denoising with Terminal constraints), a training-free algorithm for constrained sampling from diffusion models via stochastic optimal control (SOC). DiRecT enforces constraints only on the final clean sample, avoiding unnecessary restrictions on the intermediate denoising dynamics. Inspired by model predictive control, we derive a principled receding-horizon surrogate for the otherwise intractable constrained SOC formulation, yielding an efficient algorithm that cleanly separates stochastic denoising from constraint satisfaction, progressively steering samples toward feasible final trajectories without distorting the learned diffusion dynamics. Furthermore, DiRecT is highly flexible: it can leverage off-the-shelf or domain-specific optimizers, incorporate priors over environment dynamics, and optimize additional soft rewards. Extensive experiments on safe planning benchmarks demonstrate that DiRecT substantially improves deployment safety and task performance over existing diffusion-based planning baselines.

14.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Reservoir-controlled electromagnetically induced gratings in a weakly driven two-level medium

arXiv:2606.13085v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We theoretically investigate the transmission and diffraction of a weak probe field from an electromagnetically induced grating formed in a weakly driven two-level medium coupled to engineered quantum reservoirs. Using a perturbative solution of the optical Bloch equations in the weak-driving regime, we analyze how normal-vacuum, thermal, and broadband squeezed-vacuum environments modify the probe susceptibility and consequently reshape both the spatial transmission function and the far-field diffraction patterns. We show that reservoir statistics have a pronounced impact on the diffraction response by altering the amplitude and phase of the induced grating. Thermal reservoirs enhance the transmission modulation and increase the intensity of the dominant diffraction orders, whereas squeezed-vacuum reservoirs generate strongly phase-sensitive modifications that selectively redistribute optical power among diffraction channels. We further demonstrate that the detuning between the squeezed reservoir and the driving field provides an efficient mechanism for controlling diffraction directionality, leading to substantial amplification of selected angular orders. In two-dimensional geometries, squeezed-vacuum correlations produce highly structured phase landscapes and strongly anisotropic diffraction patterns, enabling directional enhancement of specific diffraction channels while suppressing others. These results establish reservoir engineering as a versatile approach for controlling transmission, diffraction efficiency, and angular selectivity in minimal two-level systems, with potential applications in programmable photonic devices, beam steering, and quantum optical platforms.

15.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Latent space mapping of interpretable structural coordinates from stochastic single-molecule signals

arXiv:2606.16950v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Nanopores are versatile single-molecular sensors, but their utility is fundamentally constrained by stochastic translocation dynamics warping any encoded information. We resolve it by shifting from time-domain analysis to a learned latent-space mapping via a contrastive encoder trained exclusively on simulated signals from a physics-informed model. This encoder maps solid-state nanopore signals of engineered DNA barcodes into an interpretable molecular coordinate system. The learned representation is responsive to structural barcode parameters while remaining invariant to acquisition conditions and translocation conformation, allowing data pooling across devices. Molecule identification requires a single pass through the encoder, reducing computational cost by three orders of magnitude relative to alignment-based methods. We experimentally validate through mixture quantification, rare-variant detection, consensus barcode reconstruction, and real-time signal acquisition. This shift from temporal analysis to mapping structural coordinates into a latent space changes the paradigm behind analyzing stochastic sensor signals by linking classification to interpretable encoded molecular information.

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

Generative Modeling of Bach-Style Symbolic Music: A Comparative Study of Autoregressive, Latent-Variable, and Adversarial Approaches

arXiv:2606.13626v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study generative modeling of Bach-style symbolic piano music using a shared MIDI corpus and three model families: autoregressive LSTMs with attention, latent-variable models including recurrent VAEs and vector-quantized VAEs, and generative adversarial networks. We compare their ability to model polyphonic note sequences, learn useful latent representations, and generate stylistically coherent compositions. Our experiments show that the autoregressive LSTM with attention produces the most musically coherent samples, while vector quantization helps mitigate posterior collapse and yields more structured outputs than conventional recurrent VAEs. The adversarial approach captures local pitch patterns but remains difficult to train and generalizes less reliably to Bach's style. These results highlight the relative strengths and failure modes of autoregressive, latent-variable, and adversarial approaches for symbolic music generation.

17.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-11

DLDN-Bench: A Benchmark Framework for Deep Learning de Novo Peptide Sequencing in Proteomics

De novo peptide sequencing is an essential approach for analyzing mass spectrometry data because it enables the identification of novel peptides without relying on protein sequence databases. Recent advances in deep learning have substantially improved the performance of de novo sequencing methods, but the rapid emergence of new models has led to heterogeneous evaluation practices and limited comparability. To address this, we introduce DLDN-Bench, a benchmark framework including a set of benchmark datasets derived from human muscle biopsy mass spectrometry data retrieved from PRIDE and annotated through consensus across multiple widely used database search engines. Using these datasets, we systematically benchmark recent deep learning-based de novo sequencing tools alongside traditional approaches. Performance is assessed using established metrics, including precision and coverage relative to a pseudo-ground truth defined by cross-engine agreement. To demonstrate the utility of DLDN-Bench, we benchmark four recent deep learning models and make all results publicly available. This benchmark framework provides a standardized basis for comparing state-of-the-art methods and offers an extensible resource for evaluating future tools in de novo peptide sequencing.

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

Semantic search for 100M+ galaxy images using AI-generated captions

Finding scientifically interesting phenomena through slow manual labeling campaigns severely limits our ability to explore the billions of galaxy images produced by telescopes. In this work, we develop a pipeline to create a semantic search engine from completely unlabeled image data. Our method leverages Vision-Language Models (VLMs) to generate descriptions for galaxy images, then contrastively aligns a pre-trained astronomy foundation model with these embedded descriptions to produce searchable embeddings at scale. We find that current VLMs provide descriptions that are sufficiently informative to train a semantic search model that outperforms direct image similarity search. Our model, AION-Search, achieves state-of-the-art zero-shot performance on finding rare phenomena despite training on randomly selected images with no deliberate curation for rare cases. Furthermore, we introduce a VLM-based re-ranking method that nearly doubles the recall for our most challenging targets in the top-100 results. For the first time, AION-Search enables flexible semantic search for over 100 million galaxy images, enabling discovery from previously infeasible searches, including the identification of 36 new extragalactic stellar stream candidates. More broadly, our work provides an approach for making large, unlabeled scientific image archives semantically searchable, expanding data exploration capabilities in fields from Earth observation to microscopy. The code, data, and app are publicly available at https://github.com/NolanKoblischke/AION-Search

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

MENTOR: Reinforcement Learning via Flexible Teacher-Optimized Rewards for Tool-Use Distillation

Distilling the tool-use capabilities of large language models (LLMs) into small language models (SLMs) is essential for their practical application. The predominant approach, supervised fine-tuning (SFT), suffers from poor out-of-domain (OOD) generalization due to its rigid alignment with static teacher trajectories. While reinforcement learning (RL) offers an alternative, the capacity limitations of SLMs pose a severe dilemma: sparse outcome rewards provide insufficient guidance, whereas strict trajectory matching imposes overly restrictive constraints. To bridge this capacity-driven gap, we propose MENTOR, which introduces a flexible yet process-aware reward structure. Instead of enforcing rigid replication, MENTOR uses the teacher's reference to guide tool-use behavior, balancing behavioral alignment with downstream performance. Extensive experiments on controlled executable-tool benchmarks demonstrate that MENTOR improves OOD tool-use performance compared to SFT and strict RL baselines. Our findings suggest that within verifiable tool-use environments, flexible tool-use alignment offers a more effective approach than strict trajectory replication for developing adaptable small models.

20.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Linear algebra at exponential scale via tensor network dimension reduction

arXiv:2606.15350v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Many problems in modern scientific computing are challenging because of a curse of dimension, where their mathematical formulation involves objects whose dimension is exponential in the nominal "size" of the problem. Tensor networks can provide a compact representation for exponentially large vectors and matrices that arise in applications, but these representations do not always lead to reliable algorithms. This paper develops and analyzes techniques for randomized dimension reduction of tensor network data. These techniques support a suite of efficient algorithms for provably solving exponential-scale linear algebra problems, including trace estimation and eigenvalue approximation. The paper includes several stylized illustrations from quantum many-body physics with ambient dimension up to $2^{200}$.

21.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Hybrid Acousto-Optical Double Dressing of a Two-Level System

arXiv:2509.25847v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We experimentally investigate resonance fluorescence from a two-level system in a novel configuration where a strong laser drives an optical Rabi oscillation while an acoustic field parametrically modulates the frequency of the two-level system. We observe emission spectra that deviate markedly from the standard Mollow triplet, including dynamical cancellation of the central peak. A doubly dressed state model incorporating hybridization among the emitter, optical field, and acoustic field captures these features. Guided by this model, we experimentally validate the condition for optimal cooling of acoustic phonons in an emitter-optomechanical system. These results reveal new regimes of strongly driven quantum nonlinear interactions.

22.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

Curiosity-Critic: Cumulative Prediction Error Improvement as a Tractable Intrinsic Reward for World Model Training

arXiv:2604.18701v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Local prediction-error-based curiosity rewards focus on the current transition without considering the world model's cumulative prediction error across all visited transitions. We introduce Curiosity-Critic, which grounds its intrinsic reward in the improvement of this cumulative objective, and show that it admits a tractable per-step surrogate: the difference between the current prediction error and the asymptotic error baseline of the current state transition. We estimate this error baseline online with a learned critic co-trained alongside the world model; since the critic only has to learn how hard a transition is to predict, its estimate of the irreducible noise floor converges well before the world model saturates, redirecting exploration toward learnable transitions. The reward is higher for learnable transitions and collapses toward zero for stochastic ones, thereby separating epistemic (reducible) from aleatoric (irreducible) prediction error online. Prior prediction-error curiosity formulations, from Schmidhuber (1991) to learned-feature-space variants, emerge as special cases corresponding to specific approximations of this error baseline. Experiments on a stochastic grid world show that Curiosity-Critic outperforms prediction-error, visitation-count, and Random Network Distillation methods in training speed and final world model accuracy.

23.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-19

Diffusion Language Models: An Experimental Analysis

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized language modeling through autoregressive generation, enabling strong performance across a wide range of tasks. Recently, Diffusion Language Models (DLMs) have emerged as an alternative paradigm that generates text through iterative denoising rather than next-token prediction, allowing parallel refinement of entire sequences. While numerous diffusion-based architectures have been proposed, differences in evaluation protocols, datasets, inference budgets, and generation hyperparameters make it difficult to compare their capabilities and understand the trade-offs they offer. In this work, we present a systematic experimental analysis of modern DLMs. Specifically, we evaluate eight state-of-the-art DLMs across eight benchmarks spanning reasoning, coding, translation, knowledge, and structured problem solving, while explicitly considering both generation quality and computational efficiency. Beyond downstream evaluation, we analyze the impact of key inference-time factors, including denoising steps, context length, block size, and parallel unmasking strategies, and complement large-scale experiments with controlled comparisons of smaller models trained under identical conditions. Our analysis highlights the strengths and limitations of diffusion-based language modeling across different tasks, architectures, and inference budgets. We show that the behavior of DLMs is strongly influenced by generation-time design choices, leading to distinct trade-offs between performance and computational efficiency. Overall, our study provides practical insights into the capabilities and deployment characteristics of contemporary DLMs.

24.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-06-22

Beyond the canonical: The role of post-transcriptional regulation in drug-target interaction prediction

by Md Istiaq Ansari, Khandakar Tanvir Ahmed, Debby D. Wang, Kirill Medvedev, Wei Zhang Protein isoforms produced from the same gene through post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms, such as alternative splicing, can substantially alter protein structure and function, including drug-binding properties. However, most existing drug-target interaction (DTI) and drug-target affinity (DTA) prediction models rely exclusively on a single representative protein sequence per gene, typically the canonical or longest isoform, thereby overlooking the functional diversity introduced by alternative isoforms. This assumption can introduce bias, limit generalizability, and compromise the biological validity of model predictions. In this study, we systematically investigate the impact of protein isoform variation on DTI prediction accuracy. Our results show that substituting the canonical sequence with an alternative isoform often leads to substantial declines in predictive performance. Structural and binding affinity analyses further reveal that these discrepancies are frequently associated with changes in predicted binding-site configurations, which we further examine through controlled perturbations of binding-site residues. These experiments suggest that even subtle alterations in binding regions can lead to inconsistent DTI predictions. Overall, our findings uncover a critical limitation in current DTI modeling frameworks and underscore the importance of incorporating isoform-specific information to better reflect biological reality and improve therapeutic relevance. The codes and datasets are available at https://github.com/compbiolabucf/DTIVariant.

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

Probing Low Frame Rate Degradation in Neural Audio Codecs

arXiv:2606.16969v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Low frame rates in neural audio codecs are attractive for autoregressive speech synthesis, where the generation cost scales linearly with the sequence length. Recent work has demonstrated that codecs can operate at 12.5 Hz and below, but the mechanisms underlying low frame rate degradation remain insufficiently understood. We investigate these mechanisms through a controlled frame rate ablation. We reproduce a quality cliff at 6.25 Hz reported in previous works and evaluate candidate explanations: phonemic collisions and codebook saturation, neither of which shows evidence of a fundamental barrier. The cliff is instead caused by suboptimal training configuration: fixed clip duration during training yields too few tokens at low frame rates, starving the decoder of inter-token context. Once corrected, WER degrades smoothly with phonemic load down to 3.1 Hz and 1.6 Hz, suggesting the inference-time efficiency gains of low frame rate codecs are more accessible than previously assumed.