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01.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-25

RAVEN: Long-Horizon Reasoning & Navigation with a Visuo-Spatio-Temporal Memory

Long-term robot deployment requires a compact and scalable memory that preserves fine-grained visual semantics, grounds observations in space and time, and enables efficient storage and retrieval. In this paper, we propose RAVEN, an agentic memory system for long-horizon robotic question answering and navigation. RAVEN stores visual embeddings with pose and time in a vector database, and grounds retrieval in a spatial map to answer queries and navigate to goals. By operating directly on visual embeddings, RAVEN avoids lossy image-to-text captioning and enables accurate semantic, spatial, and temporal retrieval at scale. Across several simulated and real-world video question-answering benchmarks, RAVEN consistently surpasses caption-based memory systems and matches frontier VLMs on long-horizon tasks at 10$\times$ lower retrieval cost. Finally, we instantiate RAVEN on a Unitree Go1 robot for the task of long-horizon navigation for natural language goal-reaching, and show successful deployment over several large indoor environments.

02.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-16

Steady-State Approximation Error of Heterogeneous Mean-Field Models

作者:

arXiv:2606.09022v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This paper studies heterogeneous mean-field models in which agent parameters are sampled from a population distribution. We establish an $O(1/M)$ bound on the steady-state mean-square error between the occupancy measure of the $M$-agent system and the corresponding annealed mean-field equilibrium. The analysis extends Stein's method for homogeneous mean-field models and reveals a fundamental difference between homogeneous and heterogeneous systems. While stability of the mean-field dynamics is sufficient in the homogeneous setting, heterogeneous systems further require uniform robustness of the occupancy dynamics with respect to perturbations of the initial condition. The results are illustrated through a heterogeneous SIS epidemic model.

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

Provably Efficient Regularized Online RLHF with Generalized Bilinear Preferences

arXiv:2602.23116v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We consider the problem of regularized best-response max-regret minimization in online RLHF under general preferences and bandit feedback. While various regularizers are utilized to robustify alignment, known polylogarithmic regret guarantees remain heavily specific to KL. To investigate whether such fast rates extend beyond KL, we adopt the Generalized Bilinear Preference Model (GBPM) – capturing intransitive preferences over $d$-dimensional item-wise features via a rank-$2r$ skew-symmetric matrix – to isolate the impact of generic regularization. Crucially, under GBPM, we prove that the dual gap of any greedy policy is bounded by the squared estimation error, derived using only strong convexity and skew-symmetry. Under a feature coverage assumption, we establish a generic polylogarithmic regret of $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(\eta d^4 C_{\min}^{-1} (\log T)^2 \wedge d^2 C_{\min}^{-1/2} \sqrt{T})$ with Greedy Sampling, and a dimension-wise improved regret (for well-conditioned arm-sets) of $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(C_{\min}^{-2} \sqrt{\eta r T} \wedge r^{1/3} C_{\min}^{-4/3} T^{2/3})$ with Explore-Then-Commit, where $\eta^{-1}$ is the regularization coefficient, $T$ is the time horizon, and $C_{\min}$ is an arm-set dependent quantity. This demonstrates that ``fast'' regrets are not KL-specific, but rather a fundamental consequence of generic strongly convex geometry.

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

Examining the Cognitive Gap Between Authors and Peer Reviewers on Academic Paper Novelty

Novelty is a crucial metric for assessing the quality of academic papers. Scholars strive to highlight the novel aspects of their work, particularly in the title, abstract, and introduction. Peer review, serving as the gatekeeper of scientific rigor, rigorously evaluates the novelty of papers, yet a cognitive gap may exist between author self-promotion and reviewer evaluation. To investigate this, we analyzed 15,328 academic papers published in Nature Communications from 2016 to 2021, along with their peer-review comments. We found that both reviewers and authors emphasize result-oriented innovation, with reviewers adopting a more comprehensive evaluation perspective. Furthermore, by examining promotional intensity against inherent paper novelty, we found that its effect depends on the paper's actual innovation level. Highly innovative papers benefit from stronger promotional language, receiving more positive evaluations. We also found that promotional language significantly correlates with reviewer disagreement on novelty specifically for papers of moderate innovativeness, whereas it has negligible impact for papers with either very high or very low novelty. This reveals how promotional language operates most prominently in the gray area of academic evaluation.

05.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

Structured Noise Adaptation for Sequential Bayesian Filtering with Embedded Latent Transfer Operators

arXiv:2606.14195v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Kalman filters based on the Embedded Latent Transfer Operators (ELTO) emerge as novel statistical tools for sequential state estimation. However, a critical limitation stems from their use of simplified noise models, which fail to dynamically adapt to non-stationary processes. To address this limitation, we introduce an ELTO-based Bayesian filtering approach with a new structured parameterization for the filter's noise model. This parameterization enables structured noise adaptation, which couples the data-driven learning of an optimal time-invariant noise model with dynamic parameter adaptation that responds to changes in dynamics within non-stationary processes. Empirical results show that our structured noise adaptation improves the filter's dynamic state estimation performance in noisy, time-varying environments.

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

CoCoSI: Collaborative Cognitive Map Construction for Spatial Intelligence

Spatial intelligence is a key frontier for multimodal large language models (MLLMs), enabling them to reason about the physical world from visual experience. Inspired by human spatial cognition, recent approaches construct grid-based cognitive maps from multi-frame visual inputs to maintain coherent spatial representations over time. However, limited context lengths still challenge spatial understanding, while existing methods, such as long-context modeling and external memory, often require architectural changes, memory modules, or finetuning, limiting their applicability to off-the-shelf pretrained MLLMs. This motivates a lightweight, model-agnostic method for preserving spatial information beyond the native context window. To this end, we propose a plug-and-play multi-agent framework that collaboratively constructs cognitive maps as structured spatial memory, enhancing the spatial understanding of arbitrary pretrained MLLMs without architectural modification or additional training. Our framework features local-global agent coordination, cognitive map construction with atomic commits, and cross-agent verification. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method achieves superior performance on spatial understanding tasks while remaining fully training-free. Code will be released.

07.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

When AI Says "I have been in similar situations": Synthetic Lived Experience in Peer-Like Caregiver Support

Caregivers often turn to online communities for informational and emotional support. In these spaces, peer supporters frequently draw on personal narratives to respond to emotionally complex caregiving situations. As LLMs are increasingly designed as peer-like sources of support, they introduce a critical tension: AI can provide immediate, private, and nonjudgmental support, but it cannot authentically possess the lived experiences that make human peer support meaningful. Yet, when prompted to sound peer-like, LLMs may generate language that implies lived experience. This creates a synthetic lived experience paradox: the same experiential language that may make AI support feel warm, relatable, and peer-like can also falsely position the system as someone with lived experience. We examine this paradox in the context of family caregivers of people living with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD). Drawing on caregiver support exchanges from online communities and prompted peer-like responses from three LLMs – LLaMA, GPT-4o-mini, and MedGemma – we analyze how human peers use personal narratives and how AI incorporates similar narrative forms. Psycholinguistic analysis shows that peer responses used significantly more first-person and past-focused language than peer-like AI responses. Qualitatively, we identify seven types of personal narratives in human peer support and show that AI often captures their emotional work, but can fabricate experiential grounding. These findings reveal a narrative authenticity gap: peer-like AI can generate synthetic lived experience without the real experience that makes peer support meaningful. We argue that caregiver-support AI systems need mechanisms to distinguish supportive peer-like framing from fabricated lived experience, ensuring that models can offer warmth and validation without falsely positioning themselves as experiential peers.

08.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

SHERPA: Seam-aware Harmonized ERP Adaptation for Open-Domain 360$^\circ$ Panorama Generation

Panoramic imagery is increasingly used in world-generation, games, and simulation, where users may need not only photorealistic scenes but also stylized and non-photorealistic environments. Large-scale text-to-image diffusion and flow models provide broad style and semantic priors for this goal, but planar image training misaligns them with the wrap-around topology and polar regions of $360^\circ$ panoramas represented in equirectangular projection (ERP). We present SHERPA, a lightweight adaptation framework that combines frequency-selective Circular RoPE, Circular Latent Encoding/Decoding, image-side FFN adapters, and a Dual-Path Training Scheme. Circular RoPE replaces only the seam-sensitive high-frequency horizontal RoPE band with integer-periodic harmonics while preserving the pretrained lower-frequency spectrum. The Paired Panorama Path supervises geometry, while the Unpaired Style Path uses self-supervised yaw consistency for target-free stylized prompts. As a result, SHERPA generates $360^\circ$ panoramas across both photorealistic panorama domains and open-domain stylized prompts.

09.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

UniReason-Med: A Shared Grounded Reasoning Interface for 2D-to-3D Transfer in Medical VQA

We study whether grounded reasoning supervision from abundant 2D medical images can improve 3D medical VQA when both input types are aligned through a common reasoning interface. We introduce UniReason-Med, a single-checkpoint framework that processes either a 2D image or a slice-serialized 3D volume at inference time, generating interleaved textual reasoning and localized visual evidence through shared box syntax, region-token injection, and a common grounded reasoning policy. To train this interface, we construct UniMed-CoT, a 220K instruction-tuning dataset with interleaved textual reasoning and grounded visual evidence, including 170K 2D and 50K 3D samples. Through supervised fine-tuning followed by outcome-level reinforcement learning, UniReason-Med learns to generate grounded reasoning traces without IoU/Dice-based localization rewards during RL. Data-mixture and component ablations show that joint 2D+3D grounded supervision substantially improves 3D reasoning over 3D-only training, while grounding and region-token injection consistently benefit both 2D and 3D tasks. These results suggest that a shared grounded reasoning interface can transfer reasoning structure from 2D images to slice-serialized volumetric medical understanding. The code and data are publicly available at https://github.com/IQuestLab/unireason-med.

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

TruncProof: A Guardrail for LLM-based JSON Generation under Token-Length Constraints

The LLM-based generation of machine-readable outputs such as JSON has attracted significant attention for integration with external systems. However, existing approaches cannot strictly enforce the maximum number of tokens to be generated, leading to infinite generation or truncated outputs that cause a system malfunction. To address this limitation, we propose TruncProof, a novel grammar-constrained generation method that enables LLMs to produce grammatically valid JSONs while adhering to a predefined token limit. By leveraging the properties of LL(1) parsers, TruncProof efficiently approximates the minimum number of tokens required to complete a grammatically valid output at each decoding step. Experiments on the Text-to-JSON instruction tasks demonstrate that TruncProof successfully generates syntactically correct outputs even under strict token constraints. Furthermore, we show that TruncProof can be effectively combined with advanced decoding strategies, resulting in outputs that are not only grammatically valid but also semantically accurate.

11.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-16

Free energy of non-convex multi-species spin glasses with centered Ising spins

arXiv:2606.16636v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We identify the limit free energy of all multi-species spin glasses with centered $\pm 1$ spins. The result was previously known only under a convexity assumption on the covariance function of the Hamiltonian. We also obtain a one-species reduction of the formula for balanced multi-species models.

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

Whose hotel does the AI recommend? An algorithm audit of reputation signals in LLM-assisted hotel selection

Travelers increasingly ask large language model (LLM) assistants which hotel to book, making these systems gatekeepers of property visibility – yet what moves their recommendations is undocumented. We conduct a pre-specified algorithm audit using a randomized choice-based conjoint: across personas, prompt templates, and twelve open-weight and proprietary models, assistants choose among five hotels whose guest rating, review volume and recency, management response, chain affiliation, price, eco-certification, and list position are independently randomized. We estimate the average marginal component effect of each signal on the probability of recommendation. Guest rating and price dominate (a top rating raises selection by 31.6 percentage points; a high price lowers it by 30.0), reproducing human valence-and-price primacy but over-weighting eco-certification and ignoring management response. List position – a content-free artifact – shifts recommendations causally, worth about \$12 per night. Stated reasons track revealed weights imperfectly. The findings ground generative engine optimization and the accountability of AI infomediaries in causal evidence.

13.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

A CEFR-Inspired Classification Framework with Fuzzy C-Means To Automate Assessment of Programming Skills in Scratch

arXiv:2604.00730v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Context: Schools, training platforms, and technology firms increasingly need to assess programming proficiency at scale with transparent, reproducible methods that support personalized learning pathways. Objective: This study introduces a pedagogical framework for Scratch project assessment, aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), providing universal competency levels for students and teachers alongside actionable insights for curriculum design. Method: We apply Fuzzy C-Means clustering to 2008246 Scratch projects evaluated via Dr.Scratch, implementing an ordinal criterion to map clusters to CEFR levels (A1-C2), and introducing enhanced classification metrics that identify transitional learners, enable continuous progress tracking, and quantify classification certainty to balance automated feedback with instructor review. Impact: The framework enables diagnosis of systemic curriculum gaps-notably a "B2 bottleneck" where only 13.3% of learners reside due to the cognitive load of integrating Logic Synchronization, and Data Representation–while providing certainty–based triggers for human intervention.

14.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Robust Fall Recovery for Armless Bipedal-Wheeled Robots Via Force-Guided Learning

arXiv:2606.14270v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Fall recovery is critical for autonomous legged locomotion. Existing methods have demonstrated that some legged robots, such as humanoids and quadrupeds, are capable of fall recovery from diverse postures by utilizing arms or coordinating multi-legs to generate support forces. Without arms or other legs to provide supportive assistance, a bipedal-wheeled robot must rely solely on the actuation of its legs, making recovery particularly difficult. To address this, we introduce FTSR (Force-guided Teacher-student framework with Stage-wise Rewards). The force-guided method constructs an external auxiliary force during simulation training that correlates directly with the robot's real-time height, explicitly formulating this force as an optimizable constraint. Through constrained reinforcement learning, the policy is guided toward reducing force dependency gradually and increasing the body height, developing internal recovery strategies despite having no arms for support. Height-progressive stage-Wise rewards progressively structure posture stabilization during recovery and transition to sustained locomotion, integrated with teacher-student architecture distilling privileged knowledge of force effects and recovery dynamics. After simulation training, the policy is deployed on a physical armless bipedal-wheeled robot and extensively evaluated. Experiments confirm robust and reliable fall recovery under diverse challenging conditions, demonstrating strong environmental adaptability and motion robustness, while maintaining full post-recovery motion capability. The framework also generalizes effectively to a high-DOF humanoid, confirming its practical generalizability. The project page is available at https://2350575870.github.io/force-guided.github.io/

15.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24

A Systematic Review of Sex Differences in Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting

Background: Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) is a common consequence of anaesthesia, affecting up to 30% of postoperative patients. Female sex is one of the strongest risk factors for PONV, yet no dedicated analysis has examined how this association varies across surgical settings and timepoints. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to quantify sex differences in PONV incidence across different surgical contexts. Methods: A systematic search was conducted using PRISMA guidelines across Medline and Embase from inception to September 1, 2025. Eligible studies were observational cohort studies (n[≥]500) of adult patients that conducted multivariate regression analyses including sex as a variable. Two reviewers independently screened, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias using ROBINS-E. A random-effects meta-analysis was performed. Subgroup analyses and multiple sensitivity analyses were completed. Results: From 4620 identified studies, 23 met the inclusion criteria, including 462,828 patients across various surgical settings and specialties (52% female). The pooled incidence of PONV was 21% (95% CI[16-27%]), with high heterogeneity (I2=99.9%). Meta-analysis confirmed females had a higher risk of developing PONV compared to males (pooled OR=2.40, 95% CI[2.06-2.79], I2=93.1%, p

16.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-18

Cost-effectiveness of a virtual fracture clinic versus traditional in-person fracture clinic care for adults with acute simple fractures: a protocol for a health economic evaluation within the RECITAL trial

ABSTRACT Introduction Traditional in-person fracture clinics are often overcrowded and inconvenient for patients. Virtual fracture clinics aim to address some of these concerns by improving the efficiency of the orthopaedic service and reducing unnecessary interventions while maintaining safety and quality of care. The RECITAL trial is a non-inferiority randomised controlled trial comparing follow-up care provided at a virtual fracture clinic for people with acute simple fractures to follow-up care provided at an in-person fracture clinic. This study describes the protocol for an economic evaluation of RECITAL where the primary aim is to investigate the cost-effectiveness of a virtual fracture clinic compared with traditional in-person fracture clinic care from a health system perspective. Methods and analysis The RECITAL trial recruited 312 participants with acute simple fractures and randomised them to receive follow-up care provided at a virtual fracture clinic or follow-up care provided at an in-person fracture clinic. We will conduct a within-trial analysis from a health system perspective (primary analysis), as well as a health service, patient and societal perspective. The economic evaluation will estimate the difference in the cost of resource inputs on an intention to treat basis used by participants in the two arms of the trial, allowing comparisons to be made between the in-person and virtual fracture clinics. Data for intervention costs and healthcare utilisation will be collected from trial records, hospital electronic medical records and district performance units. The results of the economic evaluation will be expressed in terms of incremental cost per utility weight gained at 12 weeks and will be plotted on a cost-effectiveness plane. Bootstrapping by resampling will be used to estimate 95% confidence intervals around costs and outcomes, and to calculate the confidence intervals around the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio. A cost-effectiveness acceptability curve (CEAC) will be plotted, which will provide information about the probability that an intervention is cost-effective, given the level of a decision makers willingness to pay for each additional outcome. Ethics and Dissemination The trail was approved by the SLHD Ethics Review Committee (RPAH Zone) (X23-0200 and 2023/ETH01038). The findings will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed journal and conference presentations. Trial registration number The trial was prospectively registered on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR; 12623000934640)

17.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-25

Convex–Concave Quadratic Spectral Filtering for Graph Neural Networks

arXiv:2606.24956v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Spectral graph neural networks (GNNs) interpret message passing as frequency-selective filtering. While low-order spectral filters are efficient, their limited selectivity often leads to weak attenuation outside the passband, whereas high-order alternatives introduce optimization challenges. We propose DCQ-GNN, a spectral GNN based on a compact bank of adaptive convex–concave quadratic filters. By restricting the filter order to two while explicitly exploiting complementary curvature, DCQ-GNN improves spectral selectivity as quantified by Dirichlet energy and entropy measures without resorting to high-order polynomial expansions. The model fuses filter outputs through a node-adaptive gating mechanism to enable node-wise structure-aware spectral selection. We provide a formal spectral analysis grounded in Dirichlet energy attenuation, von Neumann entropy, and curvature polarity, and derive explicit characterizations of filter behavior across varying levels of homophily and structural perturbations. Extensive benchmarks on 10 datasets show that DCQ-GNN ties for the top average rank (3.0) on heterophilic graphs and obtains the second-best rank (4.2) on homophilic graphs, remaining competitive with representative high-order polynomial spectral filters. Furthermore, under strong structural perturbations, DCQ-GNN exhibits substantially smaller performance degradation compared to both first-order and high-order baselines. These results demonstrate that curvature-aware quadratic banks provide a robust and efficient alternative to high-order spectral models while preserving optimization stability and computational efficiency.

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

Privacy from Symmetry: Orthogonally Equivariant Transformers for LLM Inference

arXiv:2606.16461v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Running large language models locally is often impractical, pushing inference on sensitive text to third-party providers. Split inference partially mitigates this by keeping tokens on the client and sending only hidden representations, but these representations can still be recovered via nearest-neighbor search against the public embedding table. We propose an orthogonal obfuscation procedure in which the client multiplies embeddings by a secret orthogonal matrix before transmission. To enable correct inference under arbitrary rotations, we introduce ConjFormer, a transformer variant that is exactly $\mathrm{O}(d)$-equivariant via a lightweight normalization change (scalar RMSNorm) together with blockwise orthogonal conjugation of all linear weights. As a result, the server performs the full forward pass entirely in the rotated basis and never observes unrotated hidden states. Experiments on GPT-2 and Llama 3.2 1B models fine-tuned on PubMed show that orthogonal obfuscation eliminates direct cosine nearest-neighbor inversion and reduces token recovery from over 35% top-10 to at most 1.3%, while increasing perplexity by only 0.4% after fine-tuning. These results indicate that enforcing symmetry at the architectural level can provide a practical defense for privacy-preserving LLM inference without noise injection or heavy cryptographic machinery.

19.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-24

Dietary cholesterol activates a Ral-dependent pathway driving LDLR turnover

作者:

Metabolism of the hepatic low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) is a key determinant of cholesterol homeostasis1,2. The molecular switches that coordinate LDLR trafficking and turnover in response to nutritional cues, including high dietary cholesterol, remain poorly defined3–6. Here we identify a new pathway regulated by Ral GTPases that links extracellular cholesterol signals to the intracellular trafficking machinery controlling LDLR turnover. Chronic dietary cholesterol activates the Ral proteins by increasing RAS activity, routing LDLR to lysosomes for degradation and inhibiting its recycling independently of transcriptional regulation or PCSK9. Constitutive activation of Ral via RalGAPB deletion or overexpression of constitutively active Ral mutants in hepatocytes reduces LDLR levels and impairs cholesterol clearance. Ral engages the endocytic RalBP1–REPS1 complex to promote LDLR internalization and lysosomal routing, where LDLR is degraded by the lysosomal protease cathepsin A (CTSA). Ral activation directs CTSA towards lysosomes for maturation while limiting its secretion, further promoting LDLR degradation in lysosomes. Genetic variants in this pathway significantly associate with altered cholesterol in humans. Pharmacological inhibition of CTSA activity increases hepatic LDLR function and improves cholesterol clearance, offering a potential new therapeutic strategy for hypercholesterolaemia and cardiovascular disease. Chronic dietary cholesterol activates Ral GTPases, which promote LDLR internalization and lysosomal degradation through RalBP1–REPS1 and CTSA, thereby reducing cholesterol clearance, whereas CTSA inhibition restores LDLR function and may offer a therapeutic strategy for cardiovascular disease.

20.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-24

LLM-MINE: Large Language Model based Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias Phenotypes Mining from Clinical Notes

arXiv:2603.13673v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Accurate extraction of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) phenotypes from electronic health records (EHR) is critical for early-stage detection and disease staging. However, this information is usually embedded in unstructured textual data rather than tabular data, making it difficult to be extracted accurately. We therefore propose LLM-MINE, a Large Language Model-based phenotype mining framework for automatic extraction of ADRD phenotypes from clinical notes. Using two expert-defined phenotype lists, we evaluate the extracted phenotypes by examining their statistical significance across cohorts and their utility for unsupervised disease staging. Chi-square analyses confirm statistically significant phenotype differences across cohorts, with memory impairment being the strongest discriminator. Few-shot prompting with the combined phenotype lists achieves the best clustering performance (ARI=0.290, NMI=0.232), substantially outperforming biomedical NER and dictionary-based baselines. Our results demonstrate that LLM-based phenotype extraction is a promising tool for discovering clinically meaningful ADRD signals from unstructured notes.

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

Stabilizing the Q-Gradient Field for Policy Smoothness in Actor-Critic Methods

arXiv:2601.22970v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Policies learned via continuous actor-critic methods often exhibit erratic, high-frequency oscillations, making them unsuitable for physical deployment. Current approaches attempt to enforce smoothness by directly regularizing the policy's output. We argue that this approach treats the symptom rather than the cause. In this work, we theoretically establish that policy non-smoothness is fundamentally governed by the differential geometry of the critic. By applying implicit differentiation to the actor-critic objective, we prove that the sensitivity of the optimal policy is bounded by the ratio of the Q-function's mixed-partial derivative (noise sensitivity) to its action-space curvature (signal distinctness). To empirically validate this theoretical insight, we introduce PAVE (Policy-Aware Value-field Equalization), a critic-centric regularization framework that treats the critic as a scalar field and stabilizes its induced action-gradient field. PAVE rectifies the learning signal by minimizing the Q-gradient volatility while preserving local curvature. Experimental results demonstrate that PAVE achieves smoothness comparable to policy-side smoothness regularization methods, while maintaining competitive task performance, without modifying the actor.

22.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

From Overload to Convergence: Supporting Multi-Issue Human-AI Negotiation with Bayesian Visualization

arXiv:2603.22766v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As AI systems increasingly mediate negotiations, understanding how the number of negotiated issues impacts human performance is crucial for maintaining human agency. We designed a human-AI negotiation case study in a realistic property rental scenario, varying the number of negotiated issues; empirical findings show that without support, performance stays stable up to three issues but declines as additional issues increase cognitive load. To address this, we introduce a novel uncertainty-based visualization driven by Bayesian estimation of agreement probability. It shows how the space of mutually acceptable agreements narrows as negotiation progresses, helping users identify promising options. In a within-subjects experiment (N=32), it improved human outcomes and efficiency, preserved human control, and avoided redistributing value. Our findings surface practical limits on the complexity people can manage in human-AI negotiation, advance theory on human performance in complex negotiations, and offer validated design guidance for interactive systems.

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

Physics in 2-Steps: Locking Motion Priors Before Visual Refinement Erases Them

Image-to-Video diffusion models leverage input images to generate visually stunning content, yet frequently produce motion that violates physical laws. We reveal a surprising finding: a 2-step generation often exhibits better physical consistency than a 50-step output from the same model. Through spectral analysis, we trace this to phase erosion during denoising; the phase degrades significantly (dropping by $\approx 18\%$ from step 2 to step 50), whereas the magnitude remains relatively stable. Building on this insight, we propose PhaseLock, a training-free framework that preserves the valid motion priors from few-step inference throughout the denoising trajectory. Rather than relying on full-step inference for physical consistency, PhaseLock extracts a motion prior from just 2 steps and enforces it onto high-fidelity generation via Latent Delta Guidance. Our approach effectively mitigates phase degradation, improving physical consistency by an average of 6.2 points across diverse models while largely maintaining visual fidelity, with negligible overhead ($1.06\times$ time, $1.02\times$ memory) and reduced reliance on expensive external guidance methods ($\sim5\times$ time). Project Page: https://dnwjddl.github.io/phaselock

24.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-11

Hantavirus Disease in Uruguay: Trends and Mortality Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Introduction: Hantavirus disease is an emerging and potentially severe zoonosis of global distribution. In Uruguay, it is transmitted by rodents inhabiting peridomestic, suburban, and rural areas. Global incidence is estimated at 150,000 to 200,000 cases per year, with up to 300 annual cases in the Americas. Since 1997, Uruguay's Ministry of Public Health (MPH) has monitored Hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS), the most common clinical presentation in the region. By 2019, a total of 271 cases had been identified in the country, with an estimated mortality rate of nearly 50%. Objectives: To describe the clinical, epidemiological, and occupational characteristics of patients with Hantavirus disease in Uruguay during the pre-pandemic (2018-2019) and pandemic (2020-2021) periods. Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional, observational study was conducted, including all serologically confirmed cases of Hantavirus infection reported to the MPH between 2018 and 2021. Clinical and demographic data were extracted from the mandatory reporting form for zoonotic diseases. Incidence and case fatality rates were calculated, and factors associated with fatal outcomes were analyzed. Results: A total of 58 confirmed cases were identified between 2018 and 2021. Most patients were male (62%), with a mean age of 36.5 years (SD 16). A decline in incidence was observed during 2020-2021, with no significant change in case fatality. Direct rodent exposure was the most frequently associated risk factor. Montevideo and Canelones were the most affected departments. Renal and pulmonary involvement were significantly associated with mortality. Conclusion: Hantavirus remains a relevant public health concern in Uruguay. Although a decrease in incidence was observed during the COVID-19 pandemic years, case fatality rates remained high. The findings underscore the need for sustained surveillance and early recognition, particularly in urbanizing regions.

25.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

AutoPass: Evidence-Guided LLM Agents for Compiler Performance Tuning

arXiv:2606.20373v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) show promise for code compilation tasks, but applying them to runtime performance tuning is difficult due to complex microarchitectural effects and noisy runtime measurements. We present AutoPass, a multi-agent framework for compiler performance tuning that uses compiler and runtime evidence to guide LLM-generated optimization decisions. Rather than treating the compiler as a black box like prior auto-tuning schemes, AutoPass opens up the compiler to the LLM, enabling it to query compiler-internal optimization states and analyze the intermediate representation to orchestrate compiler options. The search process iteratively refines optimization configurations using measured runtime feedback to diagnose regressions and guide latency-improving edits. AutoPass operates in an inference-only, training-free setting and requires no offline training or task-specific fine-tuning, making it readily applicable to new benchmarks and platforms. We implement AutoPass on the LLVM compiler and evaluate it on server-grade x86-64 and embedded ARM64 systems. AutoPass outperforms expert-tuned heuristics and classical autotuning methods, achieving geometric-mean speedups of 1.043x and 1.117x over LLVM -O3 on x86-64 and ARM64, respectively.