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01.
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.

02.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Consistent Evaluation of Operators Involving the Position Operator in the Bloch Representation: Application to the Orbital Moment

arXiv:2606.11679v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The position operator plays a central role in condensed-matter observables such as velocity, orbital moment, and electric polarization. In solid-state physics, the evaluation of operators incorporating the position operator has not reached a consensus, as observed in the operator-level discrepancy between the local circulation of Wannier functions and the self-rotation of wave packets. Here, to achieve a consistent evaluation of such operators, we propose three rules for evaluating operators involving the position operator in the Bloch representation. The rules are devised to satisfy physical conditions: independence from the choice of unit cell, preservation of Hermitian conjugacy for the product of operators, and recovery of the correct intraband velocity. We further address the gauge dependence of the position operator and introduce a scheme termed gauge filtration, which systematically removes gauge-dependent contributions from the operators containing the position operator. This methodology ensures that the quantities obtained from the operator evaluation correspond to observable physical phenomena. By applying our framework, we reconcile the results concerning the self-rotation of the wave packet and the local circulation of the Wannier function. We expect our proposal to establish a consistent framework for evaluating operators involving the position operator.

03.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

How Seemingly Inconsequential Design Choices Dictate Performance of LLMs in Pathology

General-purpose large language models (LLMs) are routinely used as baselines when evaluating specialized pathology models on whole-slide images (WSIs). Because WSIs exceed contemporary model context limits, LLM baselines routinely use small, high-magnification patches processed independently via majority voting, without systematic evaluation of seemingly inconsequential design choices such as patch size, patch count, and magnification. Generalist LLMs have consistently underperformed specialized systems, reinforcing the perception that domain-specific training or architectural adaptation is necessary for pathology tasks involving WSIs. Here, we conduct a systematic factorial analysis of four input design factors: inference mode, patch size, magnification, and patch count. We demonstrate that prior studies have overstated the gap between specialized models and general-purpose LLMs by choosing non-optimized input configurations. On the MultiPathQA benchmark, switching to a single balanced configuration (large patches at lower magnification, processed jointly) raises GPT-5 from 15.1% to 39.5% on cancer-type classification (TCGA) and from 38.1% to 62.9% on organ classification (GTEx). Per-task optimization yields further gains up to 43.9% (TCGA) and 71.6% (GTEx). The same configuration generalizes to two other models and to a fully held-out CPTAC cohort, where it improves Gemini 3 Flash by 23.4 percentage points without any task-specific tuning.

04.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-12

ProMiSE: Protein Multi-State Evaluation Benchmark in Biological Contexts

Proteins are inherently dynamic, with biological functions often emerging from transitions between multiple conformational states. While recent breakthroughs have largely addressed the static structure prediction problem, no systematic benchmark exists to demonstrate how well current models capture functionally relevant dynamics. We introduce ProMiSE, the first benchmark that provides both a dataset and an evaluation scheme, based on native biological assemblies and integrating major conformational change mechanisms - intrinsic, ligand-induced, and protein-induced - within a single curated dataset. We conducted a comprehensive evaluation of state-of-the-art structure prediction models, including AlphaFold3 and recent generative approaches. Our findings reveal that current models exhibit a limited ability to sample intrinsic multi-states and are often insensitive to biological context in induced scenarios. Internal representation analysis suggests that training-data exposure can shift predictions toward dominant conformational states over alternative biologically relevant states, primarily at the structure module. In contrast, results from BioEmu indicate that reducing decoding-stage bias can substantially improve multi-state sampling without major changes to upstream pair representations.

05.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

AQ4SViT: An Automated Quantization Framework with Search Gating Policy for Compressing Spiking Vision Transformers

arXiv:2606.15523v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Spiking Vision Transformers (SViTs) have emerged as alternative low-power ViT models, but their large sizes hinder their deployments on resource-constrained embedded AI systems. To address this, state-of-the-art works proposed quantization techniques to compress SViT models, but their manual, human-guided approach needs a huge design time and power/energy consumption to find the appropriate quantization setting for each given network, making this approach not scalable for quantizing multiple networks. Toward this, we propose AQ4SViT, a novel automated quantization framework for SViTs that can provide quick quantization settings with good trade-offs between accuracy and memory. To achieve this, AQ4SViT employs the following key ideas: quantization search strategy that evaluates the quantization setting candidates while considering the accuracy constraint; and search gating policy that quickly evaluates and selects promising quantization candidates by leveraging membrane potential drift as a performance proxy. In the search gating policy, AQSViT employs two search algorithm variants to provide trade-off options: Greedy search, which performs fast but may lead to local optima; and Beam search, which performs slower but has better performance in finding global optima selection due to a wider search space. Experimental results show that AQ4SViT-Greedy quickly finds the appropriate quantization settings, achieving up to 6.6x faster search time and up to 82.5% memory saving compared to the state-of-the-art; while AQ4SViT-Beam further reduces the memory footprint by up to 90% compared to the state-of-the-art, but with 4.5x longer search time; all these results are obtained while maintaining high accuracy within 1.5% from the original/non-quantized models on the ImageNet dataset. These results highlight that AQ4SViT framework offers advancements toward SViT deployments on embedded AI systems.

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

Learning Survival Models with Right-Censored Reporting Delays

arXiv:2510.04421v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Survival analysis provides statistical methods to model the time until an event occurs. Reporting delays arise when event times are not observed at their occurrence but are only revealed upon reporting. This issue is particularly critical for timely risk evaluation when the observation window is short due to administrative censoring. In this study, we incorporate right-censored reporting delays by jointly modeling parametric hazards for the event and reporting processes. We then construct a consistent estimator for the model parameters and develop a Monte Carlo expectation-maximization algorithm to compute it. To address the challenges posed by administrative censoring, we leverage these findings and propose a transfer-learning procedure. Experimental results demonstrate that our method improves the accuracy of timely risk evaluation under administrative censoring.

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

Sparse positive maps on qutrits with exact nondecomposability thresholds and PPT-entanglement transitions

arXiv:2606.19765v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study a family of sparse positive maps on qutrits for which positivity, decomposability, and PPT entanglement can all be analysed explicitly. The block structure of the associated Choi matrices reduces positivity to a Hermitian biquadratic form and leads to exact positivity boundaries for three representative parametric families. For the same families we determine the exact transition between decomposable and non-decomposable maps and construct associated PPT states of two classes. The first consists of witness-adapted deformations naturally tied to the non-decomposability analysis. The second consists of analytically tractable families whose full PPT-entangled branch is detected by fixed positive maps, yielding exact thresholds between separability and bound entanglement. For the trace-preserving subclass, we further compare positivity with a recent eigenvalue bound for 2-positive maps, thereby making the gap between positivity and higher-order positivity fully explicit within this family.

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

Optimal Transport for Machine Learners

arXiv:2505.06589v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Modern machine learning repeatedly manipulates probability measures: empirical datasets, generated samples, latent distributions, class-conditional laws, particle systems, weights of wide networks and attention patterns. Optimal transport is useful in this setting because it compares such objects by asking how mass should move. It therefore combines a statistically meaningful notion of discrepancy with a geometry of interpolation, dual certificates and variational dynamics. This makes OT a common language for losses, generative modeling, domain adaptation, robust learning, barycenters, gradient flows and mean-field descriptions of learning algorithms. This book presents the main OT techniques with these machine-learning uses in mind. It starts from finite assignment and the Monge map viewpoint, passes to Kantorovich couplings and dual potentials, and then explains the algorithmic ideas that make transport usable: linear programming, semi-discrete cells, Sinkhorn scaling and low-dimensional projections. The same objects are then reused as a geometry of measures, giving Wasserstein distances, barycenters, gradient flows, dynamic formulations and Gaussian/Bures formulas. The final chapters emphasize the variants most relevant to modern ML: divergences and adversarial losses, entropic and unbalanced relaxations, robust or spectral ground geometries, Gromov and quantum extensions, and transport-based views of generative models, mean-field networks and attention dynamics. The goal is to keep the mathematics explicit while exposing the computational and geometric intuitions needed to turn OT into a working toolbox for machine learners.

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

Robin-Neumann Coupling of PINN and FEM Solvers: A Steklov-Poincaré View, with Application to Fluid-Structure Interaction with Contact

arXiv:2606.14181v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) are meshless and carry moving geometry and topology change through resampling of collocation points; the finite-element method (FEM) is the workhorse for boundary-fitted discretisations. Coupling the two across a shared interface promises the best of both, yet existing PINN-FEM schemes are validated only empirically. We put the coupling on a domain-decomposition footing: viewing each solver as a Steklov-Poincaré (trace-to-flux) operator, we transfer the classical Dirichlet-Neumann (DN) divergence diagnosis and its Robin-Neumann (RN) cure, including a closed-form, sweep-free interface impedance, and prove a PINN-specific contraction theorem: a trained network realises only a perturbed Steklov operator with a per-step training residual, and RN still contracts, with no shared-eigenbasis hypothesis, to a floor set by the achieved training loss. Because a PINN has no stiffness matrix, we introduce a Fourier-mode interface probe that recovers the network's resolvable Steklov eigenvalues to within 0.5% and doubles as a diagnostic of the network's spectral cap. The theory predicts measured PINN-FEM contraction rates to within 7% on 1D and 2D Poisson couplings, and a two-slab analogue of the large-added-mass regime shows RN's per-mode impedance matching winning decisively where tuned scalar relaxation saturates. We demonstrate the framework on a Stokes/rigid-disc problem with Alart-Curnier contact: the meshless PINN fluid absorbs the topology change at contact by collocation exclusion alone, no remeshing and no cut cells, and the static-equilibrium contact reaction matches the submerged weight to 0.4% under mesh refinement. We quantify remaining limitations: the warm-started PINN drifts off the Stokes manifold over long horizons, and matched FEM-FEM benchmarks attribute pre-impact squeeze-film signatures to PINN under-resolution.

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

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

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

12.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

Quality Adaptive Angular Margin Learning for Respiratory Sound Classification

arXiv:2606.11915v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present a quality-adaptive angular-margin learning framework that improves feature generalization by enforcing intra-class compactness and inter-class separability. Our framework, titled QLung, introduces a no-reference audio quality margin derived from spectral entropy and root-mean-square energy, which adaptively scales angular margins based on recording quality. To this end, we propose a log-scaled angular margin that stabilizes training under severe class imbalance. We also use an angular classifier that normalizes features and class weights, ensuring margin penalties are applied consistently on the unit hypersphere. Our approach improves in-distribution performance on the ICBHI dataset by 2.46\% over the cross-entropy baseline, and most significantly, achieves the strongest out-of-distribution performance on the SPRSound dataset compared to prior state-of-the-art methods. Code is available at https://github.com/RSC-Toolkit/QLung.

13.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-19

Towards practical PDMP sampling: Metropolis adjustments, locally adaptive step-sizes, and NUTS-based time lengths

arXiv:2503.11479v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Piecewise-Deterministic Markov Processes (PDMPs) hold significant promise for sampling from complex probability distributions. However, their practical implementation is hindered by the need to compute model-specific bounds. Conversely, while Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) offers a generally efficient approach to sampling, its inability to adaptively tune step sizes impedes its performance when sampling complex distributions like funnels. To address these limitations, we introduce three innovative concepts: (a) a Metropolis-adjusted approximation for PDMP simulation that eliminates the need for explicit bounds without compromising the invariant measure, (b) an adaptive step size mechanism compatible with the Metropolis correction, and (c) a No U-Turn Sampler (NUTS)-inspired scheme for dynamically selecting path lengths in PDMPs. These three ideas can be seamlessly integrated into a single, `doubly-adaptive' PDMP sampler with favourable robustness and efficiency properties.

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

Contact-Based Fringe Projection Profilometry for High-Resolution 3-D Surface Measurement of Reflective and Transparent Objects

This paper presents a contact-based 3-D surface measurement method based on a Digital Fringe Projection (DFP) system, belonging to the vision-based tactile sensing family pioneered by the commercially successful GelSight sensor. Such sensors have proven effective for robotic fingertip manipulation and contact sensing. However, because GelSight employs photometric stereo with RGB LEDs, it does not measure absolute depth directly but instead infers it by integrating estimated surface gradients, which can accumulate reconstruction errors; in addition, it becomes increasingly difficult to calibrate as the sensing area grows, and its depth accuracy is challenged on highly reflective or transparent objects. To overcome these drawbacks, we propose a fringe-projection-based contact measurement technique that performs triangulation-based 3-D reconstruction on a coated silicone contact surface, providing dense per-pixel surface geometry and full-field 3-D shape measurement over the contact region. By integrating high-accuracy digital fringe projection into the sensor, our approach simplifies calibration over larger areas and enhances depth precision for complex surfaces. Experimental results, including a direct comparison with a GelSight Mini sensor, a sphere-fitting accuracy evaluation, and an uncertainty analysis, confirm that the proposed method significantly improves the accuracy and stability of structured-light-based 3-D measurements, allowing reliable reconstruction of objects with diverse optical properties.

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

Radar-Guided Polynomial Fitting for Metric Depth Estimation

We propose POLAR, a novel radar-guided depth estimation method that introduces polynomial fitting to efficiently transform scaleless depth predictions from pretrained monocular depth estimation (MDE) models into metric depth maps. Unlike existing approaches that rely on complex architectures or expensive sensors, our method is grounded in a fundamental insight: although MDE models often infer reasonable local depth structure within each object or local region, they may misalign these regions relative to one another, making a linear scale and shift (affine) transformation insufficient given three or more of these regions. To address this limitation, we use polynomial coefficients predicted from cheap, ubiquitous radar data to adaptively adjust predictions non-uniformly across depth ranges. In this way, POLAR generalizes beyond affine transformations and is able to correct such misalignments by introducing inflection points. Importantly, our polynomial fitting framework preserves structural consistency through a novel training objective that enforces local monotonicity via first-derivative regularization. POLAR achieves state-of-the-art performance across three datasets, outperforming existing methods by an average of 24.9% in MAE and 33.2% in RMSE, while also achieving state-of-the-art efficiency in terms of latency and computational cost.

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

Graph-ESBMC-PLC: Formal Verification of Graphical PLCopen XML Ladder Diagram Programs Using SMT-Based Model Checking

PLCopen XML defines two encoding formats for IEC 61131-3 Ladder Diagram programs: a textual encoding using elements, and a graphical encoding that represents rung logic as a directed graph of localId/refLocalId connections. ESBMC-PLC supported the textual format but parsed graphical exports from CONTROLLINO, Beremiz, and OpenPLC Editor into an empty GOTO intermediate representation, causing vacuous verification success. This paper presents Graph-ESBMC-PLC, which closes this gap with a DFS-based graphical LD resolver. The resolver traverses the connection graph from leftPowerRail to each coil, extracts rung paths as Boolean contact conjunctions, and applies a three-tier I/O inference scheme. Ordering coils by rightPowerRail connectionPointIn sequence ensures SET coils process before RESET coils, matching IEC scan-cycle semantics. The graphical-to-IR conversion leaves the ESBMC backend unchanged. Validation on 3 graphical LD programs from CONTROLLINO/OpenPLC Editor shows all produce full GOTO IR with nondeterministic inputs and rung logic, versus the empty IR previously. All 3 verify SAFE at k=2 under 70ms. The 11 textual LD benchmarks are fully preserved, with no regression. Two Beremiz examples with no LD content or unsupported timer semantics are reported as discovered limitations. Artifact at Zenodo (DantasCordeiro2026graphical, doi:10.5281/zenodo.20699856).

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

CD-RCM: Generalizable Continuous-Depth Novel View Synthesis for Reflectance Confocal Microscopy

Reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) provides noninvasive, cellular-resolution "optical biopsies" of human skin in vivo by acquiring en-face images at successive depths, forming a sparse z-stack. Due to optical limitations, these stacks are anisotropic 3D volumes with lateral resolution (0.5 $\mu$m) $\sim$6 times higher compared to axial resolution, which is defined by the optical sectioning (3 $\mu$m), limiting the interpretation of tissue. Our goal is to provide continuous-depth visualization by interpolating intermediate sections and making the 3D volume isotropic. Such a representation permits arbitrary-direction sectioning, including histopathology-like cross-sectional examination, without requiring per-patient optimization. To that end, we introduce the first RCM-specific novel-view synthesis (NVS) approach, CD-RCM, a feedforward model that predicts realistic, unseen depths from sparsely sampled RCM stacks. Classical neural rendering methods focus on reconstruction from surface-level multi-view observations. In contrast to surface-level camera views, RCM can acquire optically sectioned en-face images of tissue beyond the surface up to 200 $\mu$m. However, during visualization of the RCM stacks, observations of the shallower sections (towards the surface) obscure the deeper ones. This unique axial imaging geometry and layer-dependent anatomical organization motivated our development of a tailored architectural and training framework that explicitly accounts for RCM's depth-resolved, occlusive imaging physics. Experiments demonstrate that CD-RCM achieves high-fidelity novel-view synthesis with sub-second inference time.

18.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

Free-Placement Optimization of Ground Station Locations for Low-Earth Orbit Satellites

arXiv:2606.12667v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Rapidly expanding low Earth orbit satellite constellations are placing increasing demands on terrestrial ground networks, motivating the development of more efficient ground station network designs. Current approaches select sites from predefined locations, limiting optimization to existing infrastructure and constraining performance. In contrast, free-placement optimization operates over a continuous spatial domain on Earth, broadening the search space and allowing higher-throughput configurations at the cost of potentially requiring new infrastructure deployment. In this work, we introduce SCORE (Sequential Cyclic Optimization via Refinement & Evaluation), a two-stage free-placement method for ground station design. SCORE combines sequential coordinate selection with cyclic refinement to manage high-dimensionality, non-convexity, and local minima that challenge global optimizers. We benchmark SCORE against one-shot methods such as differential evolution (DE) and integer programming approaches using locations from Kongsberg Satellite Services and the World Teleport Association. Tests across two commercial Earth observation constellations (Capella Space and ICEYE) and one synthetic Walker-Star constellation show that SCORE requires up to 5x fewer function evaluations to converge relative to DE while improving downlink throughput by up to 13%. Compared to fixed-site methods, unconstrained SCORE achieves up to 15% greater total downlink, establishing a strong empirical performance benchmark for flexible placement; infrastructure-constrained SCORE retains over 92% of this gain while restricting placement to within proximity of existing fiber and power infrastructure. We also explore trade-offs between expanding existing stations and deploying new sites, informing future ground network design for operational constellations.

19.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-16

Utilising Artificial Intelligence to Identify Ventricular Tachycardia Ablation Targets in Sinus Rhythm

Background and Aims: Machine learning has shown potential in predicting ablation targets for ventricular tachycardia (VT) in an animal model. This study progresses to externally validating deep learning approaches for human data. Methods: The development and external validation dataset included 21 and 13 patients, respectively, with structural VT undergoing catheter ablation. In the development datasets, electrophysiological studies were conducted using the AdvisorTM HD grid (EnsiteTM X), while both CARTO and Ensite Precision were used in the validation dataset. In each patient, VT ablation targets were defined as mapping points within 8 mm of VT isthmuses. Three advanced machine learning models were trained using cardiac mapping data acquired in both omnipolar and unipolar configurations during sinus rhythm and ventricular pacing. Discrimination was evaluated using nested leave-one-out cross-validation at patient level. Results: Overall, graph convolutional networks (GCNs), which integrate intracardiac signal waveforms with three-dimensional electroanatomical geometries, achieved the highest performance, with optimal results obtained from unipolar electrograms acquired in sinus rhythm (median AUC 0.793, sensitivity 83.6%, specificity 69.0%). This may be partly explained by the inclusion of repolarization dynamics in unipolar electrograms and the higher point density of sinus rhythm maps. Comparable performance was observed in the external dataset. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that graph convolutional networks applied to sinus rhythm EGM waveforms collected during substrate mapping can localise critical components of VT re-entry circuits. This approach has potential to provide fast and accurate ablation guidance without the need to induce and map VT, improving safety and efficacy of VT catheter ablation.

20.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-06-09

Multi-stable oscillations in cortical networks with two classes of inhibition

by Arnab Dey Sarkar, Bard Ermentrout In the classical view of cortical rhythms, interactions between excitatory pyramidal neurons (E) and inhibitory parvalbumin-expressing interneurons (I) are sufficient to generate gamma- and beta-band oscillations. However, it is now well established that multiple inhibitory interneuron subtypes exist and that they play important roles in the generation and modulation of these rhythms. In this paper, we develop a spiking network model consisting of populations of E, I, and an additional interneuron type, somatostatin-expressing neurons (S), which receive excitation from the E cells and inhibit both the E and I populations. The S cells are further modulated by a third inhibitory subtype, vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) neurons, which receive inputs from other cortical areas. We reduce the spiking network to a system of nine differential equations that describe the mean membrane potential, firing rate, and synaptic conductance for each population. Using this reduced model, we identify a wide range of parameters that exhibit multiple coexisting rhythms. Employing tools from nonlinear dynamics, we then explore the roles of the two classes of inhibition, as well as VIP modulation, in shaping the properties of these rhythms.

21.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

Global Convergence of Gradient Descent for Score Matching in Gaussian Mixtures via Reverse Fisher Divergence

arXiv:2606.19876v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The score matching problem is a central training objective in modern generative modeling, diffusion models, fitting unnormalized statistical models, and inverse problems. A standard approach is to minimize the forward Fisher divergence, where the expectation is taken with respect to the teacher distribution. However, recent results show that even in simple Gaussian mixture model settings, this objective can lead to undesirable and initialization-dependent convergence behavior. In this paper, we study an alternative objective: the reverse Fisher divergence, where the expectation is taken with respect to the student distribution. We analyze gradient descent (GD) for fitting Gaussian mixture models and show that this change in the objective leads to significantly better optimization properties. First, when the teacher distribution is a single Gaussian and the student is a Gaussian mixture model with fixed weights and identity covariances, we prove the global convergence of GD from arbitrary initializations. Second, we extend the analysis to the case where the teacher is also a Gaussian mixture model and prove global convergence guarantees under a global random initialization scheme and a $\widetilde{\Omega}(1)$-separation assumption on the target means. In particular, with high probability, each student component converges near its closest teacher component, and we provide conditions under which the student distribution converges in total variation distance. Our proofs rely on a new Lyapunov-based analysis of the gradient descent dynamics, showing that the reverse Fisher divergence has a much more favorable optimization landscape than the forward Fisher divergence.

22.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Computational Identifiability

arXiv:2606.19361v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Identification conditions describe the computability of a target query or parameter of interest as a function of the type and amount of information available. In causal identification, this information is often expressed in the form of a causal graph, and data are observed or collected for some subset of variables in the graph. Target queries may be for a single effect alone or for a class of effects in a given model. The derivation of an identification algorithm then defines mathematically the process by which the desired causal effect(s) can be uniquely determined, theoretically, in expectation. Identifiability in expectation, or 'theoretical identifiability,' generally assumes asymptotic properties, infinite data, or other mathematically idealized conditions. In this paper, we explore a fundamental distinction between this theoretical, idealized notion of identifiability and a proposed alternative that is computation-bound. The framework we propose - 'computational identifiability' - is to instead define a finite computational search procedure for an empirical estimator. If this process finds an estimator empirically, within a desired error tolerance, then identifiability is satisfied, conditional on the specified assumptions of the search (i.e., a prior distribution over the parameters) and conditional on the search procedure itself. Through several experiments, we demonstrate how this framework allows us to answer fine-grained, practical identification questions, such as identification with small finite samples, with ambiguous graphical criteria, with mixed observational-interventional data, and across counterfactual data and estimands. Code is available at https://github.com/lbynum/metadentify.

23.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

Identifying Structural Biases from Causal Mechanism Shifts

arXiv:2606.18834v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Causal discovery methods commonly assume that all data is independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.) and that there are no unmeasured variables affecting the system. In practice, these assumptions are often violated, leading to inaccurate inference. In this paper, we study how to identify hidden confounding and selection biases from causal mechanism shifts. In particular, we show that structural biases lead to dependent mechanism shifts. That is, by considering for which variables the mechanisms change given data from different environments, we can tell which variables are unbiased, which are subject to hidden confounding, and which are undergoing selection bias. We formalize this into an empirically testable criterion based on mutual information, and show under which conditions it identifies structural biases. To tell which nodes are subject to what kind of bias, we introduce the StruBI algorithm. Experiments on synthetic and real-world data show that StruBI works well in practice, accurately recovering affected variable sets and types of biases, outperforming the state-of-the-art by a wide margin.

24.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

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

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

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

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

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