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01.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

A Multi-Domain Benchmark for Detecting AI-Generated Text-Rich Images from GPT-Image-2

Text-rich images often contain privacy-sensitive, transactional, or decision-relevant information. As recent multimodal image generation models become increasingly capable of synthesizing realistic textual content and structured visual designs, detecting AI-generated text-rich images has become an important challenge for digital trust and content authenticity. Existing benchmarks, however, largely focus on object-centric images and provide limited coverage of scenarios where textual semantics and layout organization are central. In this paper, we introduce a multi-domain benchmark for detecting text-rich images generated by OpenAI's GPT Image 2. The benchmark contains 8,602 images across six representative categories: commercial posters, infographics, academic posters, receipts, tables, and UI screenshots. Using this benchmark, we evaluate five representative AI-generated image detectors in a zero-shot setting and analyze their overall, category-wise, and post-processing robustness. Our results show that detector performance is highly domain-dependent: methods that perform well in some categories often fail on others, and even the strongest conventional detector exhibits severe sensitivity to JPEG compression. We further conduct an exploratory evaluation with a multimodal vision-language model, revealing both its promise and its limitations on structured formats. These findings highlight the need for text- and layout-aware detection methods for modern AI-generated images. Our dataset is released at XXX.

02.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

DiffCoord: Differentiable Coordination for Distributed Multi-Agent Trajectory Optimization

arXiv:2509.01630v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Integrating the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) with Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) provides a scalable framework for distributed multi-agent trajectory optimization. In practice, ADMM is typically truncated for computational efficiency, tightly coupling parameters that would otherwise separately govern coordination quality and task performance. In this paper, we propose Differentiable Coordination (DiffCoord), a unified framework that jointly meta-learns these coupled parameters for the truncated ADMM-DDP pipeline. These parameters are generated by agent-wise neural networks for task adaptation, and the same networks are shared among isomorphic agents to enable scalability to varying agent counts. We achieve efficient meta-learning by differentiating the ADMM-DDP pipeline end-to-end. Notably, this yields an auxiliary ADMM-LQR distributed gradient solver that computes and coordinates meta-gradients with respect to these parameters. This solver inherits the computational structure of the pipeline, enabling reuse of key computation results and efficient parallelization over agents and along trajectory horizons. We validate DiffCoord through numerical and physical experiments on a cooperative aerial transport system, where it reconfigures quadrotor formations for safe 6-DoF load manipulation in tight spaces. It adapts robustly to varying team sizes and load dynamics, while reducing per-agent gradient computation time by up to 70% compared with state-of-the-art trajectory-gradient methods.

03.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-25

Quantum metrology of electric and magnetic dipole moments: ultimate limits and optimal regimes

arXiv:2606.25510v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The characterization of electric and magnetic dipole moments (EDM and MDM) in quantum systems is central to fundamental physics and quantum sensing. While EDM searches provide powerful probes of CP violation within and beyond the Standard Model, precise MDM estimation is crucial for high-precision magnetometry and the development of quantum sensors. In this work, we address the ultimate precision limits for separate and simultaneous estimation of both dipole moments in a generic two-level system coupled to electromagnetic fields. We analyze three classes of quantum probes/strategies: unitary and depolarizing dynamics, and thermal equilibrium states. For each, we derive the quantum Fisher information (matrix), identify optimal probes, and determine the ideal operating conditions, such as evolution times and temperatures, that maximize estimation precision. We further assess the compatibility and sloppiness of the statistical models, showing that orthogonal dipole moments configurations enable joint estimation of EDM and MDM, whereas parallel configurations are intrinsically sloppy, permitting only the estimation of a single parameter combination. Our results provide a unified metrological framework for estimation schemes ranging from neutron EDM searches to molecular magnetometry, and highlight the distinct roles of coherence, noise, and thermalization in multiparameter quantum sensing of dipole moments.

04.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Policy-Embedded Graph Expansion: Networked HIV Testing with Diffusion-Driven Network Samples

arXiv:2601.16233v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: HIV is a retrovirus that attacks the human immune system and can lead to death without proper treatment. In collaboration with the WHO and the University of Witwatersrand, we study how to improve the efficiency of HIV testing with the goal of eventual deployment, directly supporting progress toward UN Sustainable Development Goal 3.3. While prior work has demonstrated the promise of intelligent algorithms for sequential, network-based HIV testing, existing approaches rely on assumptions that are impractical in our real-world implementations. Here, we study sequential testing on incrementally revealed disease networks and introduce Policy-Embedded Graph Expansion (PEGE), a novel framework that directly embeds a generative distribution over graph expansions into the decision-making policy rather than attempting explicit topological reconstruction. We further propose Dynamics-Driven Branching (DDB), a diffusion-based graph expansion model that supports decision making in PEGE and is designed for data-limited settings where forest structures arise naturally, as in our real-world referral process. Experiments on real HIV transmission networks show that the combined approach (PEGE + DDB) consistently outperforms baselines (e.g., 17.3% improvement in discounted reward and 15.4% more HIV detections with 25% of the population tested) and explore key tradeoffs that drive solution quality.

05.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-06-12

A new method for augmenting short time series, with application to pain events in sickle cell disease

by Kumar Utkarsh, Nirmish R. Shah, Tanvi Banerjee, Daniel M. Abrams Researchers across different fields, including but not limited to ecology, biology, and healthcare, often face the challenge of sparse data. Such sparsity can lead to uncertainties, estimation difficulties, and potential biases in modeling. Here we introduce a novel data augmentation method that combines multiple sparse time series datasets when they share similar statistical properties, thereby improving parameter estimation and model selection reliability. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach through validation studies comparing Hawkes and Poisson processes, followed by application to subjective pain dynamics in patients with sickle cell disease (SCD), a condition affecting millions worldwide, particularly those of African, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Indian descent.

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

Poster: Exploring the Limits of Audio-Based Detection of Turkish Phone Call Scams

Scam phone calls exploit vulnerable communities worldwide, yet research on detection has focused almost exclusively on English and other high-resource languages. In low-resource settings such as Turkish, detection is especially difficult, as annotated data is scarce and technological defenses remain limited. This research investigates how large language models (LLMs) can support scam detection in Turkish by introducing the first public multi-modal dataset of 100 aligned audio-transcript pairs of scam and benign conversations. We evaluate seven LLMs spanning three model families: Gemini 2.5 (Flash, Flash-Lite, Pro), GPT-4o, and Qwen (Max, Plus, Turbo), under three input conditions: raw audio, automatic speech-to-text transcripts, and transcripts refined by a native speaker. Our results suggest that transcript-based inputs consistently outperform direct audio processing, while human-corrected and uncorrected transcripts perform comparably. By centering a low-resource language and real world threat, this work highlights the urgent need for culturally and linguistically inclusive AI safety research and more robust multi-modal systems for fraud prevention.

08.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Helical Dirac Current with Local Coupling to a Chiral Potential

arXiv:2606.17618v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We show that exact Dirac eigenstates in cylindrical confinement carry a definite helical conserved-current texture even in the zero orbital angular momentum channel l = 0. For the lowest confined mode, the Dirac current contains a nonvanishing azimuthal component together with longitudinal transport and exhibits opposite handedness in the two spin-resolved sectors. The structure also persists into the evanescent region. We further derive the channel-resolved matrix-element kernel generated by a static chiral scalar potential acting on the confined l = 0 Dirac modes. The resulting spin-selective coupling arises from the Dirac current texture and the scalar chiral potential, and yields a geometric selection rule in which diagonal channels vanish while off-diagonal conversion channels survive. The coupling strength is governed by an internal sampled-current overlap Jchi(k), defined as the integral from 0 to R of f(rho) times jphi_up(rho, k) times rho d rho. This quantity measures the spatial overlap between the chiral radial profile and the spin-up azimuthal Dirac-current density. The mechanism is fully local and texture-based, without external magnetic fields or spin-orbit coupling. Within standard Dirac theory, this work identifies the minimal static Dirac-geometric kernel underlying spin-selective response, establishing a baseline structure from which dynamical-medium, scattering, and transport formalisms can be systematically developed toward a complete description of spin-polarization phenomena such as CISS.

09.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Bayesian Anytime Pareto Set Identification for Multi-Objective Multi-Armed Bandits

arXiv:2606.18785v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Identifying Pareto optimal solutions is critical to support multi-objective decision-making. We introduce the first anytime Multi-Objective Multi-Armed Bandit algorithm for the Pareto Set Identification problem, taking a Bayesian approach: Top-Two Pareto Front Thompson Sampling (TTPFTS). We benchmark TTPFTS against state-of-the-art fixed-budget Pareto Set Identification algorithms on synthetic environments. Next, we demonstrate its practical utility in a challenging multi-objective molecular discovery setting by efficiently exploring an ultra-large synthesis-on-demand molecular library. Furthermore, we introduce a novel uncertainty quantification metric that estimates our algorithm's confidence in the predicted Pareto set. We demonstrate that this metric effectively proxies true performance, yielding a robust methodology for monitoring learning progress in complex settings. Finally, we complement these empirical findings with a theoretical proof of the algorithm's asymptotic correctness.

10.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

The Inverse Born Rule Equivalence. On the Informational Limits of Real-Valued Amplitude Encodings and the Measurement of Quantum Advantage in Data Embeddings

arXiv:2602.21350v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: When does quantum data encoding provide genuine quantum advantage, and when does it merely rephrase a classically solvable problem? We prove an Equivalence Theorem demonstrating that any encoding mapping classical data to real-valued amplitudes, $\vert\psi_c\rangle = \sum_i c_i \vert i\rangle$ with $c_i \in \mathbb{R}$ and $\sum_i c_i^2 = 1$, composed with a data-independent parameterised unitary and computational-basis measurement, yields exactly the class of classical quadratic forms. We identify the geometric mechanism driving this collapse: the restriction to $\mathbb{R}$ forces a vanishing Berry connection, removing the complex phases required for data-dependent quantum interference. To operationalize this boundary, we introduce encoding diagnostics – phase complexity $C[\Phi]$ and mode-wise von Neumann mutual information $I[\Phi]$ – and link them to the information-geometric excess $\Delta g$. We show that for all real-valued encodings, $\Delta g = 0$ identically. We term the misidentification of such models as evidence of quantum computational power the Inverse Born Rule Fallacy. Supported by numerical experiments, our results establish that complex-phase structure is a strictly necessary condition for data-driven (Type~B) quantum advantage.

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

ChiKhaPo: A Large-Scale Multilingual Benchmark for Evaluating Lexical Comprehension and Generation in Large Language Models

Existing benchmarks for large language models (LLMs) are largely restricted to high- or mid-resource languages, and often evaluate performance on higher-order tasks in reasoning and generation. However, plenty of evidence points to the fact that LLMs lack basic linguistic competence in the vast majority of the world's 3800+ written languages. We introduce ChiKhaPo, consisting of 8 subtasks of varying difficulty designed to evaluate the lexical comprehension and generation abilities of generative models. ChiKhaPo draws on existing lexicons, monolingual data, and bitext, and provides coverage for 2700+ languages for 2 subtasks, surpassing any existing benchmark in terms of language coverage. We further show that 6 SOTA models struggle on our benchmark, and discuss the factors contributing to performance scores, including language family, language resourcedness, task, and comprehension versus generation directions. With ChiKhaPo, we hope to enable and encourage the massively multilingual benchmarking of LLMs.

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

Incentives Of EdTech: A Systematic Review Of EduNLP Research

While the Natural Language Processing community has dedicated significant resources in developing educational technologies (EdTech) that support this shift, it remains unclear whose interests are being best served among the stakeholders of education. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review of 204 papers published in venues of the Association for Computational Linguistics' Special Interest Group on Building Educational Applications in 2024 and 2025, and validate these against EdTech papers from the wider ACL Anthology. By examining stakeholder inclusion and the prioritisation of research tasks, our findings reveal a critical tension: a push and pull between private-sector incentives and the foundational needs of educational infrastructure. Our analysis reveals that teachers are systematically under-represented as beneficiaries of research (33.3%) despite being the most affected, that real-world deployment remains rare (9.8%), and that ethical engagement tends toward acknowledgement rather than action. Drawing on exemplary papers in our corpus, we offer concrete recommendations for more responsible EduNLP research practices.

13.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Quantum-inspired Ising machine using sparsified spin connectivity

arXiv:2604.04606v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Combinatorial optimization problems become computationally intractable as these NP-hard problems scale. We previously proposed extraction-type majority voting logic (E-MVL), a quantum-inspired algorithm using digital logic circuits. E-MVL mimics the thermal spin dynamics of simulated annealing (SA) through controlled sparsification of spin interactions for efficient ground-state search. This study investigates the performance potential of E-MVL through systematic optimization and comprehensive benchmarking against SA. The target problem is the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model with bimodal and Gaussian coupling distributions. Through equilibrium state analysis, we demonstrate that the sparsity control mechanism provides a consistent search of the solution space regardless of the problem's coupling distribution (bimodal, Gaussian) or size. E-MVL not only achieves the best performance among all tested algorithms–solving exact solutions up to 1600 spins where the best SA baseline is limited to 400 spins–but also provides insights that significantly improve SA's own temperature scheduling. These results establish E-MVL's dual contribution as both an efficient optimizer and a practical methodology for enhancing SA performance. Moreover, FPGA implementation achieved an approximately 6-fold faster solution speed than SA.

14.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

Using Seismic Statistical Features and VQ-VAE to Improve Spatiotemporal Seismicity Predictability

arXiv:2606.10069v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In this paper we build upon a previous study in which we demonstrated, using XGBoost and earthquake catalogue data from Japan and Chile, that a set of 60 seismic statistical features (SSFs) had much greater predictive value than a set of 428 generic time series features from the tsfresh package. We here extend this previous work in two key ways, focusing on data from Japan as a large dataset is necessary in order to allow for the training of a deep learning (autoencoder) model. First, we move from whole-region prediction (considering, for each candidate event, the likelihood of an event M $\geq$ 5.0 anywhere in the region in the next 15 days) to localised predictions in which both the region of feature computation and the region of prediction are restricted to a circle of radius 24 km around the candidate event, and we show that performance remains excellent, similar to our previous whole-region study for the same area. Second, we here couple this proven set of SSFs, based on one-dimensional (catalogue) data, with a novel feature based on two-dimensional seismic maps, obtained by training a VQ-VAE model to reproduce such maps as output and identifying a measure of its error in doing so with a localised build-up of crustal stress. We show that while localised prediction based on SSFs can be effective alone, with test AUC values as high as those obtained in the case of Japan in our previous whole-region study, the inclusion of the new natively-spatial VQ-VAE-derived feature, top-ranked by SHAP analysis, can enhance performance and additionally appears to near-wholly replace the traditionally-computed $b$-value in terms of feature usage.

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

C-QUERI: Congressional Questions, Exchanges, and Responses in Institutions Dataset

Questions in political interviews and hearings serve strategic purposes beyond information gathering including advancing partisan narratives and shaping public perceptions. However, these strategic aspects remain understudied due to the lack of large-scale datasets for studying such discourse. Congressional hearings provide an especially rich and tractable site for studying political questioning: Interactions are structured by formal rules, witnesses are obliged to respond, and members with different political affiliations are guaranteed opportunities to ask questions, enabling comparisons of behaviors across the political spectrum. We develop a pipeline to extract question-answer pairs from unstructured hearing transcripts and construct a novel dataset of committee hearings from the 108th–117th Congress. Our analysis reveals systematic differences in questioning strategies across parties, by showing the party affiliation of questioners can be predicted from their questions alone. Our dataset and methods not only advance the study of congressional politics, but also provide a general framework for analyzing question-answering across interview-like settings.

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

What does measuring one qubit reveal about another? $K$-networks as a directed diagnostic for quantum circuits

arXiv:2606.16549v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Many-qubit circuit states are hard to inspect directly, so they are often summarized by pairwise graph weights. Common pairwise weights report symmetric correlations, while many circuit questions are directed and basis-specific: if qubit $i$ is measured in a given basis, how strongly does the outcome reshape the conditional state of qubit $j$? We define $K_{i\to j}$, a directed, basis-conditioned edge weight for this question. It is large when the two measurement outcomes occur with comparable probability and leave qubit $j$ in clearly different conditional states; it is zero when the source outcome is deterministic or the target states are indistinguishable. The scalar uses standard binary-ensemble distinguishability; the paper's contribution is to turn this conditional comparison into a directed network layer for circuit states. The resulting networks are computable from two-qubit reduced density matrices. They are diagnostic (not entanglement measures): for pure two-qubit states $K$ reduces to the tangle $C^2$ (squared concurrence)[WoottersConcurrence,CKWTangle], while separable mixed states can reach $K=1$. Examples on teleportation, Grover, QAOA, and random circuit families show the intended use: $K$-networks map feed-forward, phase, and interaction-graph structure that symmetric or computational-basis summaries can leave weak or absent.

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

Learning the generating functional for variance reduction in lattice QCD

arXiv:2606.15986v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The generating functional in quantum field theory provides the natural framework for constructing correlation functions as derivatives with respect to source operators. We present a methodology that leverages machine-learned normalizing flows to reduce the variance of arbitrary $N$-point correlation functions of bosonic operators in lattice gauge field theory calculations by encoding a representation of the generating functional. We show that it is possible to systematically approach noiseless estimators of correlation functions in this framework. We demonstrate this methodology with applications to calculations of glueball correlation functions and Wilson loops in Quantum Chromodynamics and Yang-Mills theory. The results show up to three orders of magnitude variance reduction.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Resource theory of interactive quantum instruments

arXiv:2603.27676v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Quantum instruments describe both the classical outcome and the updated quantum state in a measurement process. To do this in a non-trivial way, instruments must have the capability to interact coherently with the state that they measure. Here, we develop a resource theory for instruments. We consider a relevant quantifier of the separation between interactive and non-interactive instruments and show that it admits three distinct operational interpretations in terms of quantum information tasks. These concern (i) the preservation of maximally entangled states after a local measurement, (ii) the average ability to preserve random states after measurement, and (iii) the ability to recover the classical information generated from measuring half of a maximally entangled state. We also introduce a natural set of allowed operations and show that the third task fully characterises the resource content of instruments. Our general framework reproduces as special cases established resource theories for channels and measurements.

19.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-06-10

A mean-field model of neural networks with PV and SOM interneurons reveals connectivity-based mechanisms of gamma oscillations

by Farzin Tahvili, Martin Vinck, Matteo Di Volo Classic theoretical models of cortical oscillations are based on the interactions between two populations of excitatory and inhibitory neurons. Nevertheless, experimental studies and network simulations suggest that interneuron subclasses such as parvalbumin (PV) and somatostatin (SOM) exert distinct control over oscillatory dynamics. Yet, we lack a theoretical understanding of the mechanisms underlying oscillations in E-PV-SOM circuits and of the differences with respect to the classical mechanisms for oscillations in simpler E–I networks. Here, we derive a biologically realistic mean-field model of a canonical three-population E-PV-SOM circuit. This model robustly generates oscillations whose features are consistent with experimental observations, including the relative timing of PV and SOM activity and the effects of optogenetic perturbations. By reducing the model to a linear analytical form, we demonstrate that gamma oscillations emerge directly from the cell-specific connectivity of the three-population circuit. This connectivity motif alone accounts for experimentally observed phase relationships, with PV activity consistently leading that of SOM neurons. Together, this mean field model identifies a distinct structural mechanism giving rise to oscillations in canonical E–PV–SOM circuits and provides theoretical primitives for constructing large-scale, cell-type-specific models of cortical dynamics.

20.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

ExpRL: Exploratory RL for LLM Mid-Training

arXiv:2606.17024v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sparse reward reinforcement learning (RL) has become a standard tool for improving LLM reasoning, but its success depends critically on the coverage present in the base model. In practice, models are often primed for RL through mid-training on curated reasoning traces that teach useful primitive skills such as decomposition, verification, or self-correction. Although effective, this strategy requires manually specifying what the model should learn, and it remains unclear whether such primitive coverage is enough for much harder problems, which require combining these skills into broader solution strategies. We study a more automated approach: RL-based mid-training using large corpora of human-written question-answer data. Rather than treating reference solutions as targets to imitate, our method, ExpRL, uses them as reward scaffolds: references are hidden from the policy and used only to construct problem-specific grading rubrics for judging on-policy reasoning traces. The policy samples from the original problem prompt, while an LLM judge compares the sampled reasoning trace against the reference solution and assigns outcome-level or process-level dense rewards. This lets ExpRL reinforce partial progress, useful intermediate reductions, and productive reasoning behaviors that sparse final-answer rewards often fail to upweight. On challenging math reasoning tasks, ExpRL yields stronger RL priming than SFT, sparse-reward GRPO, and self-distillation, and provides a better initialization for subsequent sparse-reward RL. Additional mixed-domain experiments further suggest that ExpRL can extend beyond the original math-only setting.

21.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-24

A Training-Free Mixture-of-Agents Framework for Multi-Document Summarization using LLMs and Knowledge Graphs

Multi-Document Summarization (MDS) plays a critical role in distilling essential information from collections of textual data. Existing approaches often struggle to capture complex inter-document relationships, rely heavily on large amounts of labeled data for supervised training, or exhibit limited generalization across domains and languages. To address these limitations, we present a training-free mixture-of-agents framework for MDS that leverages the complementary strengths of large language models (LLMs) and knowledge graphs. Our approach decomposes summarization into specialized agent tasks: extractive selection, knowledge-aware abstraction, and iterative refinement, each operating without task-specific fine-tuning. We unify their outputs using a multi-perspective consistency mechanism guided by LLMs. Experiments across four datasets in English and Vietnamese demonstrate state-of-the-art or competitive performance, validating the effectiveness and adaptability of our modular design.

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

Quantifying Consistency in LLM Logical Reasoning via Structural Uncertainty

arXiv:2606.17312v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models can arrive at the same answer through reasoning paths that are unstable, contradictory, or difficult to rank consistently – a failure mode especially prevalent in multi-step deductive reasoning. Existing methods assess reliability primarily through output dispersion – measuring how much sampled answers differ – but this discards a complementary signal: whether the model can consistently rank competing reasoning candidates. We propose structural uncertainty, a consistency-aware framework derived from the stability of self-preference-induced rankings over sampled reasoning solutions. Given a query, we generate multiple candidate solutions and ask the model to judge pairwise preferences among its own outputs. We aggregate self-preferences into ranking distributions via Bradley-Terry modeling with PageRank, and decompose the signal into two entropy-based components: across-trial ranking instability and within-trial candidate ambiguity. Across five LLMs and eight benchmarks, structural signals provide information complementary to answer dispersion: on logical and mathematical reasoning tasks, the combination improves identification of unreliable instances, while on factual retrieval the structural signal collapses toward uniformity, diagnosing a regime boundary where reasoning-level consistency evaluation is uninformative. The two components relate differently to accuracy: within-trial ambiguity correlates positively with correctness – consistent with settings where multiple plausible solution paths remain competitive – while across-trial instability correlates negatively, signaling unreliable reasoning. Structural uncertainty is best understood not as a universal confidence estimator, but as a regime-sensitive evaluator of logical reasoning consistency.

23.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-16

Reliability and construct validity of the Technology Device Interference Scale in a sample of children and parents

There is increasing interest in parent-child technoference: the interference with personal interactions caused by technology devices. This study examined the reliability and construct validity of the Technology Device Interference Scale (TDIS) to measure technoference in a sample of Canadian parents and children. Parents (n=883) and children (n=376) were recruited from clinical and community settings and completed the TDIS for their own and family member technoference over three timepoints (T1=2023, T2=2024, T3=2025). TDIS internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity were assessed using Cronbachs alpha, intraclass correlation coefficient, and confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. The TDIS showed good internal consistency and adequate to good construct validity when used by children to report on their own technoference (all >.70; CFI>.95, TLI>.95, RMSEA.70; CFI>.95, TLI>.90, RMSEA[≤].11). The TDIS had low to acceptable internal consistency and poor model fit for parent report of their own technoference ( range: .63 - .66; CFI

24.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-15

QCI Connect: A Modular Full-Stack Quantum Computing Platform

arXiv:2606.14456v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In a world of various competing quantum computing architectures, hardware-agnostic, full-stack platforms are necessary to bring the full power of quantum computing hardware to domain experts via the cloud. QCI Connect and its Software Development Kit provide a reference architecture for a full-stack platform with a modular design and open-source interface definitions, built to facilitate a community-driven application ecosystem. Here, we present its overall design and features, central interfaces, and lessons learned, both for users of the platform and as a reference guide for future developments.

25.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-10

Towards the Virtual Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Patient: Inferring Cortical Excitability through Whole-Brain Dynamical Modeling

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is increasingly recognized as a multisystem neurodegenerative disorder in which motor-neuron degeneration is accompanied by widespread alterations in cortical dynamics. Among its most reproducible neurophysiological signatures is cortical hyperexcitability, yet how this local excitability imbalance shapes distributed whole-brain activity remains poorly understood. Here, we combined source-reconstructed resting-state MEG data, tractography-informed whole-brain modeling, and simulation-based inference to investigate whether ALS-related alterations in large-scale brain dynamics can be mechanistically explained by changes in cortical excitability. First, we characterized empirical brain dynamics using complementary features spanning regional activity amplitude and variability, functional connectivity, and avalanche-based metrics. These analyses revealed significant alterations in ALS patients relative to healthy controls, as well as associations with clinical impairment and disease staging. To mechanistically interpret these changes, we employed a reduced Wong-Wang whole-brain model in which local recurrent excitation modulates emergent large-scale neural dynamics. Simulations showed that increasing excitability systematically reproduced the empirical dynamical signatures observed in ALS. We then applied a simulation-based inference framework to estimate latent excitability parameters directly from empirical observations. Whole-brain model inversion revealed increased excitability in ALS patients compared with controls. The recovered excitability parameter was associated with disease staging, supporting its clinical relevance as a model-derived descriptor of ALS progression. Finally, by extending the model to estimate frontal and non-frontal excitability separately, we found that ALS-related alterations were predominantly associated with increased frontal excitability, whereas non-frontal regions appeared comparatively less affected. The recovered parameters related to disease staging. Together, these findings provide a mechanistic framework linking altered large-scale brain dynamics in ALS to selective cortical hyperexcitability, explaining how local excitability changes can give rise to global network reorganization. More broadly, they show how computational model inversion can recover latent multiscale pathophysiological processes from empirical neural recordings, offering a non-perturbative alternative to complex experimental paradigms typically required to causally probe local-to-global mechanisms.