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01.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

Characterizing the genetic basis of Cardio-Renal-Metabolic multimorbidity using multivariate genomic modelling

Cardio-renal-metabolic multimorbidity (CRMM) encompasses interrelated conditions affecting the heart, kidneys, and metabolic systems. Although the genetics of individual components are well studied, their shared architecture remains unclear. Here, we performed the largest multi-ancestry multivariate GWAS of CRMM across seven biobanks, including individuals of European (EUR; neff = 353,130), African (AFR; neff = 75,436), and East Asian (EAS; neff = 164,373) ancestry. We identified 287 lead loci in EUR, 30 in AFR, and 202 in EAS. Cross-ancestry analyses revealed ancestry-specific signals and 24 shared loci mapping to FTO and TCF7L2. Drug-repurposing highlighted candidates used for type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Mendelian randomization supported causal links with diverse diseases, while polygenic risk scores showed improved prediction across ancestries. Collectively, these findings advance understanding of CRMM genetics and inform precision medicine.

02.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

Low-Energy Reduced RISC-V Instruction Subset Processor for Tsetlin Machine Inference at the Edge

arXiv:2606.19964v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Tsetlin Machine (TM) is a logic-based machine learning approach that relies on simple bitwise operations and finite-state automata, which makes it attractive for edge AI deployments. Recent work has focused on co-processor and accelerator designs based on Tsetlin Machines (TMs). Although these designs achieve high performance, they typically depend on tightly coupled interfaces, microcode-style programming, and external host processors, limiting flexibility and ease of programming. In this work, we present a domain-specific RISC-V microprocessor architecture and design flow tailored for TM inference. Leveraging the modular structure of RISC-V, we design a reduced instruction subset processor that retains programmability while targeting improved performance and lower energy consumption for TM workloads. Instruction profiling is employed to guide instruction reduction, followed by datapath and control path simplifications tailored to TM inference. Both the baseline RV32IM core and the proposed reduced core are evaluated across multiple datasets and compared with Binarized Neural Networks (BNNs), which serve as a hardware-efficient baseline due to their reliance on bitwise operations during inference. Results show that TM achieves comparable or higher accuracy (e.g., up to 88.18% on CIFAR-2 compared to 60.0% for BNN) while reducing execution time by up to 98% across multiple datasets. Furthermore, the proposed design achieves an average $29.7\times$ reduction in energy consumption, demonstrating its effectiveness for programmable and efficient edge AI systems.

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

Variable-Width Transformers

Scaling model size, specifically depth and width, has driven significant progress in transformer-based language models. However, most architectures maintain a constant width across all layers, allocating a fixed parameter and computation budget evenly despite different layers potentially playing distinct computational roles. In this work, we empirically investigate nonuniform capacity allocation across network depth by proposing a $\times$-shaped >

04.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Pump-Free Patient-Derived Human Proximal Tubule Microphysiological System for Modeling Flow-Dependent Epithelial Maturation and Cisplatin Injury

Recent initiatives by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health to reduce animal testing in drug development have highlighted the need for in vitro platforms that better recapitulate human biology for preclinical safety assessment. Drug-induced nephrotoxicity remains a major cause of drug attrition, underscoring the need for human-relevant kidney models. To address this, a pump-free human patient-derived proximal tubule microphysiological system was developed by integrating human renal proximal tubular epithelial cells (hRPTECs), isolated from non-tumorous nephrectomy cortex, with a porous membrane-based microfluidic device. Expanded hRPTECs were cultured for 10 days under static conditions or rocker-driven shear stress approximating physiological proximal tubular flow. Shear stress increased epithelial density, enhanced proximal tubule marker expression (Na+/K+-ATPase and aquaporin-1), and improved Zonula occludens-1 and occludin localization. Bulk RNA sequencing demonstrated transcriptomic changes associated with enhanced apical maturation and epithelial signature. In cisplatin-induced injury assays, shear-conditioned epithelia exhibited reduced cell density and increased {gamma}H2AX staining, indicating greater sensitivity to nephrotoxicity. These findings demonstrate that rocker-driven shear stress promotes epithelial maturation in patient-derived hRPTECs. The pump-free human patient-derived proximal tubule microphysiological system offers a practical, scalable, and physiologically relevant platform for modeling flow-dependent proximal tubule biology and assessing human-relevant nephrotoxicity.

05.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-18

Vines-DB: An RGB image dataset for multi-species ornamental vine segmentation

The Vines-DB dataset contains 1,218 original high-resolution RGB images of seven ornamental vine species collected under field conditions at the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station's Greenville Research Farm in Logan, Utah, USA. The dataset was generated from 168 individual vine plants that were transplanted in 2022 and photographed repeatedly across multiple months during the 2023 and 2024 growing seasons (July-October). Images were captured with an iPhone 16 Pro equipped with a 48 MP camera between 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM under daylight. Vines were grown on 1.2m x 2.4m trellises and photographed from a distance of 1m against black or white Styrofoam backdrops to improve contrast and reduce background noise. The dataset includes Akebia quinata, Campsis radicans, Hydrangea anomala petiolaris, Lonicera x heckrottii, Campsis x tagliabuana 'Madame Galen', Parthenocissus quinquefolia, and Wisteria floribunda. All original images were manually annotated in Roboflow by trained annotators to produce polygon-based instance segmentation masks for eight classes, including seven species and background. After preprocessing and data augmentation, the working dataset was expanded to 2,307 images for model development and evaluation. The augmented dataset was divided into 2,019 training images, 192 validation images, and 96 test images using stratified sampling to maintain balanced representation. Vines-DB supports the development and evaluation of deep learning models for multi-class instance segmentation in precision horticulture and urban ecology. The dataset enables applications such as automated canopy cover estimation, species identification, and scalable field phenotyping. In addition, repeated monthly imaging of the plants captures temporal variation in canopy development and plant appearance, increasing the dataset's utility for segmentation benchmarking under realistic field conditions.

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

S4oP: Operator-level Pruning of Structured State Space Models for Resource-Constrained Devices

arXiv:2606.18096v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Structured State Space Models (SSMs), including the S4 and S4D architectures, have recently emerged as powerful alternatives to attention-based models for capturing long-range dependencies in sequential data. Despite their strong empirical performance, deploying these models in time- and resource-constrained settings remains challenging due to their computational and memory demands. In this paper, we propose a novel incremental, operator-level pruning approach for S4- and S4D-based models that significantly reduces inference cost while preserving predictive performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to systematically investigate structured operator pruning for SSMs. Our method progressively prunes model operators by interleaving structured masking with fine-tuning, while jointly monitoring accuracy and inference latency. We implement this approach within a unified training and evaluation framework that enables systematic exploration of efficiency-accuracy trade-offs. Experiments across multiple benchmark datasets show that pruning up to 70% of the model operators preserves the performance of the original models in most cases, while substantially reducing inference latency. These results demonstrate that structured operator pruning is an effective and previously unexplored strategy for improving the efficiency of SSMs and facilitate their deployment in practical, resource-constrained scenarios.

07.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

BioMamba: Domain-Adaptive Biomedical Language Models

Background. Biomedical language models should improve performance on biomedical text while retaining general-language-modeling fluency. For Mamba-based models, this trade-off has not been systematically studied across biomedical literature and clinical text. Methods. We developed BioMamba, a family of biomedical Mamba2 models at five scales obtained by continued pretraining of released public Mamba2 checkpoints on a balanced 80%/10%/10% mixture of PubMed abstracts, the Colossal Clean Crawled Corpus (C4), and Wikipedia. The contribution is the adaptation recipe and the accompanying open-weight checkpoints. Results. Across five scales, BioMamba consistently lowered PubMed perplexity, improved Wikipedia-style held-out perplexity by 1.46-4.72 PPL, and left C4 perplexity essentially unchanged. On six out-of-domain multiple-choice benchmarks, BioMamba stayed within +/-3 percentage points of Mamba2 with no systematic regression. After supervised fine-tuning, BioMamba+SFT matched or exceeded Mamba2+SFT on MIMIC-IV note completion and discharge summary generation at every evaluated scale, and improved PubMedQA at every scale. The strongest model (BioMamba-2.7B) reached a PubMed perplexity of 5.28 and accuracies of 90.24% and 73.00% on BioASQ and PubMedQA, respectively. Conclusions. A balanced domain-adaptive continued pretraining recipe strengthens Mamba2 language models on biomedical literature and clinical text while preserving general-language-modeling fluency.

08.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-15

Quantum gates with parametrically driven multi-qubit couplers

arXiv:2606.14522v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Superconducting quantum processors could significantly profit from enhanced connectivity together with precise control of interactions and gates between qubits. Here we investigate plaquettes of four qubits that are coupled via a central tunable coupling circuit, so that not only gates between qubits connected by an edge of the plaquette can be executed but also between qubits across the diagonal. By numerically and analytically analyzing parametrically driven processes, we explore $\sqrt{iSWAP}$-gates between any pair of qubits, also across the diagonal, as well as three-qubit interactions and gates. For experimentally available circuit parameters, we for example find $\sqrt{iSWAP}$-gates with a gate time of 50 ns and 99.9\% fidelity, which is decreased to 99.4\% if two such gates are executed in parallel on disjoint qubit pairs in the plaquette. For three-qubit gates we find fidelities of 95\% fidelity at a gate time of 200 ns.

09.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Exact Many-body Quantum Dynamics in One-Dimensional Baths via Collective Spins

arXiv:2505.00588v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Computing the exact dynamics of many-body quantum systems becomes intractable as system size grows. Here, we present a symmetry-based method that provides an exponential reduction in the complexity of a broad class of such problems $\unicode{x2014}$ qubits coupled to one-dimensional electromagnetic baths. We identify conditions under which partial permutational symmetry emerges and exploit it to group qubits into collective multi-level degrees of freedom, which we term ''superspins.'' These superspins obey a generalized angular momentum algebra, reducing the relevant Hilbert space dimension from exponential to polynomial. Using this framework, we efficiently compute many-body superradiant dynamics in large arrays of qubits coupled to waveguides and ring resonators, showing that $\unicode{x2014}$ unlike in conventional Dicke superradiance $\unicode{x2014}$ the total spin length is not conserved. At long times, dark states become populated. We identify configurations where these states exhibit metrologically useful entanglement. Our approach enables exact treatment of complex dissipative dynamics beyond the fully symmetric limit and provides a rigorous benchmark for approximate numerical methods.

10.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

FoundCause: Causal Discovery with Latent Confounders from Observational Data

arXiv:2606.17516v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Causal discovery from observational data remains challenging due to the need to recover directed structure and latent confounding without interventions. We propose FoundCause, an amortized causal discovery model trained entirely on synthetic data that maps datasets directly to causal graphs in a single forward pass. By learning from large collections of simulated structural causal models, FoundCause captures transferable statistical patterns that generalize beyond individual datasets. The architecture incorporates several key inductive biases for causal discovery. It uses a permutation-invariant transformer encoder with alternating attention over samples and variables to jointly model cross-variable dependence and per-variable distributions. Pairwise statistical features derived from classical asymmetry measures are injected through statistics-conditioned attention, guiding the model toward known causal signals. A factorized decoder separates edge existence from direction, while a triangular refinement module enables reasoning over higher-order causal motifs such as chains and colliders. In addition, a dedicated confounder module based on learnable latent tokens explicitly models hidden common causes, and the model explicitly handles missing data via its masked input representation. To our knowledge, FoundCause is the first amortized causal discovery approach to explicitly model latent confounding. FoundCause outperforms 11 classical non-amortized methods (e.g., PC, GES, NOTEARS-style optimization) and 4 amortized causal discovery methods on 15 real-world datasets, achieving +9.6% improvement in $F_1$, +1.2% in AUROC, and an 18.9% reduction in structural Hamming distance relative to the strongest non-amortized methods, while performing inference in a single forward pass.

11.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Enhanced Sensitivity near a Quantum Exceptional Point in the Absence of Engineered Dissipation

arXiv:2606.16060v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Non-Hermitian systems exhibit phenomena absent from Hermitian systems, including exceptional points (EPs), at which two or more eigenvectors coalesce. Conventional implementations rely on gain and loss, which strongly limit quantum coherence. Here, following a proposal by Wang and Clerk (PRA 2019), we realize a closed four-mode quantum system that emulates the dynamics of a PT dimer - two coupled resonators with balanced gain and loss - without engineered dissipation. The four modes are implemented as harmonics of a superconducting coplanar-waveguide resonator, with parametric couplings engineered using a current-pumped SNAIL. We use this device as a sensor for small variations in the PT dimer coupling strength. From signal-to-noise-ratio measurements, we observe enhanced sensitivity near the EP in a non-quantum-limited regime.

12.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-12

Dimension-free Markov–Bernstein inequalities for product measures

作者:

arXiv:2606.13575v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study dimension-free Markov–Bernstein inequalities for polynomials with respect to product probability measures. In the Gaussian case, for $p\ge4$, we prove that \[ \|\nabla f\|_{L^p(\gamma^n)} \le C(p)d^{\frac12+\theta_p} \|f\|_{L^p(\gamma^n)} \] for every polynomial $f$ of degree at most $d$, where $\theta_p\le \frac{2}{3p}$ and $\theta_p=0$ whenever $p$ is an even integer. Thus, for even integer exponents, we establish the sharp dependence on the degree conjectured by Eskenazis–Ivanisvili. For general $p\ge4$, the estimate improves upon their dimension-free inequality. We also obtain dimension-free Markov–Bernstein inequalities with sharp dependence on the degree for even integer exponents beyond the Gaussian setting. We first prove such estimates for the uniform distribution on the unit cube and then extend them to products of absolutely continuous measures with unimodal densities. Finally, we treat products of one-dimensional Freud measures with densities proportional to $e^{-|t|^{2m}}$.

13.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

A Privacy-Preserving Framework Using Remote Data Science for Inter-Institutional Student Retention Prediction

arXiv:2606.12845v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This study explores privacy-preserving machine learning (PPML) techniques using the PySyft platform to enable collaborative prediction of student retention between institutions. We developed a remote data science (RDS) framework with a semi-air-gapped architecture consisting of high-side and low-side servers, allowing researchers from three universities to build predictive models on sensitive student data without direct data access. Using historical data from a small private university (N=720), we evaluated three synthetic data generation approaches and validated the framework through inter-institutional collaboration. The results demonstrate consistent classification performance across institutions (Macro F1: 0.690–0.695) while maintaining strict Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) compliance. We also propose Data-Type-Aware Templates, a novel synthetic data method that prioritizes privacy over distributional fidelity. Our findings confirm that RDS-based PPML is technically feasible for educational settings and offers a practical alternative to federated learning for small-scale inter-institutional collaborations. The code is available at https://github.com/jtfields/NAIRR240195-Privacy-Preserving-Machine-Learning.

14.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Quest for quantum advantage: Monte Carlo wave-function simulations of the Coherent Ising Machine

arXiv:2501.02681v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The Coherent Ising Machine (CIM) is a quantum network of optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) intended to find ground states of the Ising model. This is an NP-hard problem, related to several important minimization problems, including the max-cut graph problem. In order to enhance its potential performance, we analyze the coherent coupling strategy for the CIM in a highly quantum regime. To explore this limit, without assuming gaussianity, we employ accurate numerical simulations. Due to the inherent complexity of the system, the maximum network size is limited. While master equation methods can be used, their scalability diminishes rapidly for larger systems. Instead, we use Monte Carlo wave-function methods, which scale as the wave-function dimension, and use large numbers of samples. These simulations involve Hilbert spaces exceeding $10^{7}$ dimensions. To evaluate success probabilities, we use quadrature probabilities. We demonstrate the potential for quantum computational advantage by reducing the time required to reach maximum success probability in a low-dissipation regime enabled by initial quantum superpositions and entanglement. Furthermore, we demonstrate that tailored time-dependent couplings can amplify these quantum effects. Comparisons with classical CIM models give evidence that quantum tunneling effects in this strong coupling limit can overcome trapping in false minima. This can greatly increase success rates, indicating a potential for quantum advantage. Finally, we perform a coherence analysis based on the state purity to examine the role of quantum coherence in CIM performance and to determine how state purity correlates with improved optimization outcomes.

15.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

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

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

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

Semantic Segmentation of Node and Edge Diagrams for Assistive Technology

In this paper, we present a novel set of related models for semantic segmentation of node-link diagrams. These diagrams are frequently used to represent mathematical graphs, relationships between concepts, and flowcharts. Such diagrams are difficult to access non-visually; while some assistive interfaces have been designed for node-link diagrams, they rely upon a machine-readable representation of the diagram, whereas such diagrams will generally be made available as bitmap images. Our compact deep learning models show excellent quantitative and qualitative performance on a large synthetic dataset of node-link diagrams, reaching per-pixel accuracy over 93\%.

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

Multi-Sensor Fusion for UAV Classification Based on Feature Maps of Image and Radar Data

arXiv:2410.16089v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The unique cost, flexibility, speed, and efficiency of modern UAVs make them an attractive choice in many applications in contemporary society. This, however, causes an ever-increasing number of reported malicious or accidental incidents, rendering the need for the development of UAV detection and classification mechanisms essential. We propose a methodology for developing a system that fuses already processed multi-sensor data into a new Deep Neural Network to increase its classification accuracy towards UAV detection. The DNN model fuses high-level features extracted from individual object detection and classification models associated with thermal, optronic, and radar data. Additionally, emphasis is given to the model's Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based architecture that combines the features of the three sensor modalities by stacking the extracted image features of the thermal and optronic sensor achieving higher classification accuracy than each sensor alone.

18.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

Running the Gauntlet: Re-evaluating the Capabilities of Agents Beyond Familiar Environments

arXiv:2606.14397v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As agentic systems continue to evolve and are widely deployed in real-world scenarios, there is a growing demand to faithfully evaluate their capabilities. However, current benchmarks are typically built on popular applications with relatively simple tasks and focus on a narrow set of capabilities while overlooking broader dimensions, resulting in saturated performance on modern agents and failing to probe their limitations. To this end, we introduce GauntletBench, a web-based benchmark for evaluating agent generalisation in challenging scenarios, focusing on three underexplored capabilities (temporal perception, graphical understanding, and 3D reasoning), across five less-covered professional applications (Video Editor, Workflow Builder, 3D Modeller, Flight Analyser, and Circuit Designer), each with 20 vision-intensive tasks (100 in total). Our benchmark provides a modular pipeline that comprises an environment compatible with both open- and closed-source agent frameworks, a controlled web-based application, a well-structured task suite, and an automated evaluation engine with diverse metrics. Contrary to widespread expectations, our empirical results reveal that frontier agentic systems remain far from achieving human-level performance. Even the state-of-the-art agent achieves only a 19.1% success rate on our GauntletBench, highlighting the limitations in these overlooked capabilities and generalisation. By comparison, non-expert human annotators achieve over 80% success on our challenging yet feasible tasks, revealing the substantial gap between current agent capabilities and those required for complex real-world scenarios.

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

Flow Map Denoisers: Traversing the Distortion-Perception Plane for Inverse Problems

arXiv:2606.19802v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Image restoration faces a fundamental tradeoff: methods that minimize error produce blurry reconstructions, while those that maximize perceptual quality yield sharp but less faithful images. Existing approaches either commit to a single operating point on this distortion perception (DP) frontier or require paired-data supervision, auxiliary models, or hyperparameter tuning of the sampler to access different points. We show that flow map models, a recent extension of flow matching for few-step sampling that learns an average field, implicitly define a one-parameter family of denoisers that continuously spans the DP frontier. The lookahead parameter t acts as a control knob between the MMSE and perceptual regimes. For Gaussian targets, we prove that varying t exactly recovers the optimal DP frontier; for natural images, we observe similar behavior empirically. Within a Plug-and-Play solver, the same mechanism extends to general inverse problems, where it controls a tradeoff between perceptual alignment and data consistency. Despite the lack of exact optimality guarantees in this setting, a single trained flow map spans the DP tradeoff, matching or exceeding specialized baselines at both extremes. Extensive experiments on CelebA ($128\times 128$) and AFHQ ($256\times 256$) across several linear and nonlinear inverse tasks validate our findings.

20.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-15

Limiting partition function for the Mallows model: a conjecture and partial evidence

作者:

arXiv:2406.18855v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Let $S_n$ denote the set of permutations of $n$ labels. We consider a class of Gibbs probability models on $S_n$ that is a subfamily of the so-called Mallows model of random permutations. The Gibbs energy is given by a class of right invariant divergences on $S_n$ that includes common choices such as the Spearman foot rule and the Spearman rank correlation. Mukherjee in 2016 computed the limit of the (scaled) log partition function (i.e. normalizing factor) of such models as $n\rightarrow \infty$. Our objective is to compute the exact limit, as $n\rightarrow \infty$, without the log. We conjecture that this limit is given by the Fredholm determinant of an integral operator related to the so-called Schrödinger bridge probability distributions from optimal transport theory. We provide partial evidence for this conjecture, although the argument lacks a final error bound that is needed for it to become a complete proof.

21.
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.

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

Do Large Language Models Have Emotions?

arXiv:2606.14742v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Do LLMs have emotions? A recent paper from Anthropic reports finding internal representations of emotion concepts in Claude Sonnet 4.5, concluding that the LLM has 'functional emotions.' We evaluate this claim against what is known about how emotions actually function in biological systems. We argue that emotions serve two core functions: the context-sensitive interpretation of situations, and the reorganization of processing across multiple systems in response to those interpretations. The Anthropic findings offer partial support for the first function, though the consistent, discrete emotional representations identified in Claude sit uneasily with affective neuroscience findings that human emotion is characterized by variable rather than uniform neural signatures. On the second function, the evidence is mixed: Claude's representations modulate output without producing the dynamic reorganization of attention, decision speed, and motivational state that defines emotion in biological systems. We close by proposing what it would take for an LLM to have emotions.

23.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

The interaction between chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in a diverse central London population

Introduction: The overlap between chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is an emerging global health challenge. We investigated the impact of MASLD and metabolic comorbidity in a diverse London viral hepatitis clinic. Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study (May 2018-Feb 2024) included adults with CHB having controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) measurements. MASLD was defined as CAP >264 dB/m plus [&ge;]1 cardiometabolic factor (CMF). We used univariable and multivariable models to examine MASLD's relationship with liver stiffness and hepatitis B viral load (HBV VL). Results: Among 323 individuals (67% male, median age 36), most were from Black (35%) or non-white British/Irish (29%) backgrounds. Overall, 64% had [&ge;]1 CMF, and 20% had MASLD. The CHB/MASLD group was significantly older (median 43 vs 35 years, p

24.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-11

Stochastic Reaction Networks Within Interacting Compartments with Content-Dependent Fragmentation

arXiv:2511.10223v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Stochastic reaction networks with mass-action kinetics provide a useful framework for understanding processes – biochemical and otherwise – in homogeneous environments. However, cellular reactions are often compartmentalized, either at the cell level or within cells, and hence non-homogeneous. We investigate a model of compartmentalization in which the rate of fragmentation of a compartment depends on the abundance of some designated species inside that compartment. The particular model of study is part of a general framework for compartmentalized chemistry with dynamic compartments that was proposed in (Duso and Zechner, PNAS, 2020). This paper builds on (Anderson and Howells, Bull. Math. Biol., 2023) where the special case where the compartment dynamics do not depend on their contents was studied mathematically. In particular, we demonstrate that the explosivity characterization from (Anderson and Howells, Bull. Math. Biol., 2023) fails in this setting and provide new sufficient conditions for non-explosivity and positive recurrence, under the assumption that the underlying CRN admits a linear Lyapunov function. These results extend the theoretical foundation for modeling content-mediated compartment dynamics, with implications for systems such as cell division and intracellular transport.

25.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-17

Towards Conversational AI for Disease Management

While large language models (LLMs) have shown promise in diagnostic dialogue1, their capabilities for effective management reasoning—including disease progression, therapeutic response, and safe medication prescription—remain under-explored. We advance the previously demonstrated diagnostic capabilities of the Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer (AMIE)1−3 through a new LLM-based agentic system optimized for multi-visit clinical management and dialogue. To ground its reasoning in authoritative clinical knowledge, AMIE leverages Gemini’s long-context capabilities4, combining in-context retrieval with structured reasoning to align its output with up-to-date clinical practice guidelines and drug formularies. In a randomized, blinded virtual Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) study, AMIE was compared to 21 primary care physicians (PCPs) across 100 multi-visit case scenarios designed to reflect UK NICE Guidance and BMJ Best Practice guidelines. AMIE was non-inferior to PCPs in management reasoning as assessed by specialists and scored better in both preciseness of treatments and investigations, and in its alignment with and grounding in clinical guidelines. To benchmark medication reasoning, we developed RxQA, a multiple-choice question benchmark derived from two national drug formularies (US, UK) and validated by board-certified pharmacists. Though AMIE and PCPs both benefited from the ability to access external drug information, AMIE outperformed PCPs on higher difficulty questions. While further research would be needed before real-world translation, AMIE’s strong performance across evaluations marks a significant step towards conversational AI as a tool in disease management.