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01.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Leishmaniasis on YouTube: a critical appraisal of the quality, reliability, and transparency of educational content

Background: Leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease of significant global public health importance, for which accurate information is essential to support prevention and early care-seeking, particularly in endemic, resource-limited settings. YouTube is a widely used source of health information, but the quality and reliability of leishmaniasis-related content have not been evaluated. We aimed to assess the quality, reliability, and transparency of English-language YouTube videos on leishmaniasis. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of YouTube videos retrieved via the YouTube Data API on 15 June 2026 using the terms "leishmaniasis," "cutaneous leishmaniasis," and "visceral leishmaniasis." After applying eligibility criteria and screening the 150 most-viewed eligible videos, 48 videos were included. Two reviewers independently assessed each video using the modified DISCERN (mDISCERN) tool, the Global Quality Score (GQS), and the JAMA benchmark criteria, with disagreements resolved by consensus. Inter-rater agreement was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and associations were examined using Spearman's rank correlation. Results: Of 402 videos retrieved, 48 met the inclusion criteria. The median GQS was 3.00 (IQR 2.00-4.00) and median mDISCERN was 3.00 (IQR 2.38-4.50), indicating moderate quality and reliability, while the median JAMA score was 2.00 (IQR 1.00-2.00), reflecting limited transparency; no video met all four JAMA criteria. The overwhelming majority of videos (47/48, 97.9%) were of professional or institutional origin. Inter-rater agreement was good to excellent (ICC 0.883 for GQS, 0.896 for mDISCERN, 1.000 for JAMA). The instruments were strongly inter-correlated (mDISCERN-GQS rho = 0.841, p < 0.001). Quality scores did not correlate positively with views, likes, or video duration; comments correlated weakly and negatively with mDISCERN (rho = -0.337, p = 0.031) and JAMA (rho = -0.381, p = 0.014). Conclusions: YouTube videos on leishmaniasis are of moderate quality and reliability but limited transparency, and are produced almost exclusively by professional sources. Video popularity, length, and age were not indicators of quality. There is a need for experts and institutions to produce clearly authored, well-sourced, and transparent educational content on this neglected tropical disease.

02.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-15

Residual Context Diffusion Language Models

Diffusion Large Language Models (dLLMs) have emerged as a promising alternative to purely autoregressive language models because they can decode multiple tokens in parallel. However, state-of-the-art block-wise dLLMs rely on a "remasking" mechanism that decodes only the most confident tokens and discards the rest, effectively wasting computation. We demonstrate that recycling computation from the discarded tokens is beneficial, as these tokens retain contextual information useful for subsequent decoding iterations. In light of this, we propose Residual Context Diffusion (RCD), a module that converts these discarded token representations into contextual residuals and injects them back for the next denoising step. RCD uses a decoupled two-stage training pipeline to bypass the memory bottlenecks associated with backpropagation. We validate our method on both long CoT reasoning (SDAR) and short CoT instruction following (LLaDA) models. We demonstrate that a standard dLLM can be efficiently converted to the RCD paradigm with merely ~300 million tokens. RCD consistently improves frontier dLLMs by 4-11 percentage points in accuracy with minimal extra computation overhead across a wide range of benchmarks. Notably, on the most challenging AIME tasks, RCD nearly doubles baseline accuracy and attains up to 4-5x fewer denoising steps at baseline's peak accuracy.

03.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-12

Characterizing metric-space-valued processes: separating classes and weak invariance principles for measure-theoretic inference

arXiv:2606.13084v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This article investigates stochastic processes taking values in metric spaces that lack a topological vector space structure, a regime characterized by intricate interplay between topological, geometric, and temporal dependence structures. It is formally established that spaces admitting an isometric Hilbertian embedding constitute a strict subclass within the much broader class of metric spaces possessing the ball property. While traditional kernel methods are susceptible to geometric distortion when the underlying space cannot be isometrically embedded into a Hilbert space, we bypass such limitations by exploiting a fundamental structural property inherent to this broader class; namely, that Borel probability measures are uniquely determined by their values on balls. These separating classes provide the foundation for the subsequently introduced measure-theoretic inference methodology. We derive uniform convergence of a family of time-dependent random measures, alongside weak invariance principles for the corresponding nonstationary random fields. This framework explicitly exposes how dependence and geometric complexity influence sample path regularity. Furthermore, because the rapid decay of small-ball probabilities can prohibit the existence of limiting distributions for supremum-based discrepancy measures, we develop $L^p$-based alternatives. By directly leveraging the introduced convergence results, this approach circumvents the need for higher-order $U$-process formulations. Finally, for spaces that do admit an isometric Hilbertian embedding, and where $U$-processes naturally arise, we establish limit theory for both degenerate and nondegenerate multi-parameter $U$-processes, and demonstrate that local discrepancy tests maintain asymptotic stability under dynamic parameter regimes.

04.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-18

Probing Semantic Alignment, Lexical Invariance, and Syntactic Influence in LLM Metaphor Processing

Large language models (LLMs) achieve strong performance on metaphor detection and interpretation tasks, yet it remains unclear what such behavioral success reveals about metaphor processing. We present a diagnostic analysis that examines the limits of behavioral evidence by probing three complementary dimensions: semantic attribute alignment, lexical invariance, and syntactic sensitivity. Using geometric probing, we assess whether model-generated interpretations align with reference semantic attributes; through context-varying substitution, we analyze the stability of lexical associations between metaphorical and literal expressions; and via controlled syntactic perturbations, we examine sensitivity in metaphor detection. Our analysis reveals that LLM-generated interpretations can exhibit semantic drift relative to reference attributes; stable lexical anchors persist across contextual conditions, potentially supporting conventional metaphors while biasing novel metaphors requiring contextual integration; and detection performance is sensitive to syntactic irregularities. These findings suggest that strong behavioral performance may reflect heterogeneous underlying signals, highlighting the need for caution when interpreting metaphor benchmarks as evidence of robust, integrated semantic understanding.

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

A spectral audit framework reveals task-dependent aperiodic reliance across EEG and ECG deep learning

arXiv:2606.08583v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Deep learning on physiological time series is interpreted through domain-specific features – oscillatory rhythms in EEG, morphological complexes in ECG – yet these signals sit atop a broadband aperiodic 1/f-like envelope that covaries with arousal, age, and pathology. We introduce a spectral audit framework combining aperiodic/periodic decomposition, phase-preserving Fourier interventions, sham controls, and simulation validation. Aperiodic reliance was task-dependent and architecture-general: across six neural architectures, flattening drops exceeded 0.42 balanced-accuracy points for sleep-wake classification, reached 0.07-0.13 for clinical abnormality detection, and remained minimal for motor imagery. Six of seven EEG foundation models showed FDR-significant aperiodic reliance on clinical EEG; age/sex and recording-era controls reduced but did not eliminate the effect. Applying the audit to PTB-XL ECG revealed neural drops of 0.32–0.36 persisting after demographic matching, confirming this confound class extends beyond EEG. Aperiodic controls should become standard for interpretable physiological time-series deep learning.

06.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-18

Stable size-biasing and the positive scale-mixture order of generalized Gaussian laws

arXiv:2606.18458v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Let $X_r\sim N_r(0,1)$ be the centered unit-scale generalized Gaussian random variable with density proportional to $\exp(-|x|^r/2)$. We prove that, for $p,q>0$, there exists a strictly positive random variable $V$, independent of $X_q$, such that $X_p\stackrel{d}{=}VX_q$ if and only if $p\le q$. Moreover, the law of $V$ is unique. For $pq$, the required Mellin quotient, viewed as the candidate characteristic function of $\log V$, is unbounded by Stirling's formula, and hence cannot be a characteristic function. The factor laws form a multiplicative cocycle, $V_{p,r}\stackrel{d}{=}V_{p,q}V_{q,r}$, for $p\le q\le r$, where the factors on the right-hand side are independent copies. Thus the Mellin quotient isolated by Dytso, Bustin, Poor and Shamai is realized constructively throughout the $p

07.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Toward quantum-noise-limited interferometric measurements of optical nonlinearity in vacuum

arXiv:2602.10896v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Quantum Electrodynamics predicts that the vacuum must behave as a nonlinear optical medium: the vacuum optical index should increase when it is stressed by intense electromagnetic fields. The DeLLight (Deflection of Light by Light) project aims to measure it by using intense and ultra-short laser pulses. The experiment uses a Sagnac interferometer to amplify the tiny deflection signal of a low-intensity probe pulse crossing the vacuum refractive-index gradient produced by an external high-intensity pump pulse. The measurement of the amplified signal by a CCD camera requires a high spatial resolution, which is limited by the ultimate quantum noise of the CCD. However, interferometric phase noise induced by the mechanical vibrations of the interferometer is also amplified and degrades spatial resolution. To overcome this, we propose a new method named High-Frequency Phase Noise Suppression (HFPNS), based on the addition of a delayed replica (5 ns) of the probe pulse. The delayed pulse, which is not affected by the pump but is subject to the same vibration noise, enables offline subtraction of correlated phase noise. In this work, we present an experimental proof-of-concept on a prototype interferometer operating with a limited amplification factor ($\mathcal{A}\simeq25$), about 10 times smaller than the required value of the final experiment. We have succeeded in reducing phase noise by a factor of 40, resulting in a residual noise level 2.3 times higher than the expected quantum noise. The residual noise is linked to delay-line instabilities and incident beam pointing fluctuations present during these tests. This result validates HFPNS as a robust method for future quantum-noise-limited interferometric measurements of vacuum optical nonlinearity, though additional stabilization and higher interferometric amplification are still needed.

08.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

The New Social Image: How AI Competency and AI Proactivity Influence Self- and Peer-Perceptions in the Workplace

arXiv:2606.00182v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Human-AI collaboration is considered the most promising way to incorporate AI in the workplace. What remains unexplored are the experiential consequences of this teaming. More specifically, in a team with AI, how humans perceive themselves (self-perception) and how they are perceived by their coworkers (peer perception) in terms of work ownership and job meaningfulness. In a 2x2x2 vignette study (n=50), participants rated perceptions of ownership, affect, job meaningfulness and satisfaction, and role dynamics across two levels (low/high) of AI proactivity and AI competency as within-subject factors, with point-of-view (self perception/peer perception) as between-subjects. Our results showed that AI with low competency or low proactivity generally improved feelings related to ownership, meaningfulness, satisfaction, and role dynamics, and also increased positive affect while reducing negative affect. However, these effects were often influenced by point-of-view. For instance, low AI proactivity resulted in higher job satisfaction from self-perception rather than peer perception. Based on our findings, we argue that designing AI for the future of work solely around performance metrics may not be adequate. Highly competent and proactive AI-driven systems can have undesirable impacts on perceptions of ownership, job identity, social image and team dynamics, and consequently, job meaningfulness.

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

MSUE: Multi-Modal Soccer Understanding Expert

This paper presents our solution to the 2026 SoccerNet VQA Challenge. We first develop a cost-effective data synthesis pipeline driven by a Vision-Language Model (VLM), which systematically restructures raw domain data into diverse VQA samples, including concise answers and long-form responses. Second, we propose MSUE, a multi-expert question answering architecture that employs a Large Language Model (LLM) to dynamically dispatch questions to text, image, and video experts. These experts are instantiated as a strong text baseline Gemini3-Flash, a fine-tuned Qwen3-VL, and an external knowledge base, respectively, working collaboratively to enhance VQA performance. MSUE achieves an accuracy of 0.95 on the challenge benchmark, securing third place in the leaderboard.

10.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Rotational Symmetry based Object Pose Estimation from Point Clouds in the Absence of Known 3D Models

Object pose estimation is crucial to many industrial applications, with one example being automated spray painting using a robot. However, confidentiality concerns often limit access to high-quality 3D models, posing a significant challenge for point-cloud-based pose estimation. In such scenarios, rotational symmetry, a readily accessible characteristic of many industrial objects, can provide valuable prior information to facilitate pose estimation.In this paper, we propose a method that leverages the rotational symmetry commonly found in industrial objects to address the challenge caused by the absence of 3D models. The object pose is jointly estimated with point cloud refinement through an iterative optimization process. This optimization relies on a rotational symmetry constraint loss. To construct this loss, each 3D point is rotated according to the currently estimated pose, and multiple correspondences are identified using nearest-neighbor search by exploiting the rotational symmetry property. These correspondences are then used to compute the rotational symmetry constraint loss, which iteratively refines both the pose and the point cloud.By explicitly incorporating rotational symmetry into the optimization process, the proposed method achieves robust pose estimation and generalizes well across diverse object types. The proposed method is evaluated on a dataset specifically created for point clouds without known 3D models, consisting of four categories of synthetic objects and one real wheel hub collected from a production line. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves performance comparable to methods that rely on known 3D models.

11.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Measuring Rényi entropy with an Echo Protocol

arXiv:2504.05237v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We present efficient and practical protocols to measure the second Rényi entropy, whose exponential is known as the purity. Our approach is based on expressing the purity in terms of transition probabilities generated by an echo-type forward-backward evolution sequence, making it applicable to quantum many-body systems. Notably, our approach does not rely on random-noise averaging, a feature that can be extended to protocols to measure out-of-time-order correlation functions, as we demonstrate. By way of example, we show that our protocols can be practically implemented in superconducting qubit-based platforms, as well as in cavity-QED trapped ultra-cold gases.

12.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-17

Revealing competitive interfacial reactions in high-energy Li–S batteries

作者:

Charge transfer at solid–liquid interfaces plays a critical role in various energy-storage systems1, particularly under dynamically varying reactant concentrations. Deciphering these intricate reaction pathways remains a substantial challenge, notably in lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries, in which achieving high energy density requires efficient conversion of highly concentrated lithium polysulfides (LiPSs)2,3. However, the mechanisms governing lithium sulfide (Li2S) deposition and dissolution under lean electrolyte conditions remain poorly understood. Here, using in situ liquid-cell electron microscopy, we directly visualize concentration-driven phase segregation at the electrode–electrolyte interface. Within these high-concentration interfacial layers (HCILs), competitive surface and solution dictate the charge-transfer dynamics and ultimately govern Li2S deposition at different phase boundaries. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the aggregation of LiPSs alters molecular geometry, electronic properties and orbital hybridization, collectively facilitating charge transfer through highly concentrated LiPSs clusters. Guided by these insights, we design optimized electrodes that balance interfacial reaction pathways, enabling fast charging (4 C, 26.8 mA cm−2) and achieving high energy densities exceeding 400 Wh kg−1. These findings provide mechanistic understanding of interfacial reactions under practical working conditions and offer a design strategy to advance Li–S batteries. Visualization of concentration-driven phase segregation within high-concentration interfacial layers in the context of high-energy lithium–sulfur batteries using liquid-cell electrochemical transmission electron microscopy reveals competitive interfacial reactions under lean electrolyte conditions at different phase boundaries.

13.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

A Convex Quasilinearization Method for Solving Nonlinear PDEs with Physics-Informed Neural Networks

arXiv:2606.18175v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present a numerical method for the forward solution of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) in which Bellman-Kalaba quasilinearization reduces the nonlinear problem to a sequence of linear subproblems, each discretized by collocation onto a trial space that is linear in its parameters and solved by a single direct linear least-squares QR factorization. The trial space, which we term Linear-in-Learnables (LiL), comprises representations whose trainable parameters enter linearly, including random-feature extreme learning machines, spectral polynomial bases, and trigonometric expansions, each implemented as a physics-informed neural network. The method thus replaces the nonconvex gradient-based training that limits standard PINNs with a convex per-step solve. We establish local Newton-Kantorovich convergence of the outer iteration to a residual-limited neighborhood under an explicit smallness condition, with the limiting accuracy governed by the best-approximation residual of the trial space rather than by an optimization tolerance. The method, denoted LiL-Q, is assessed on seven benchmarks spanning scalar nonlinear PDEs (Bratu, viscous Burgers, Buckley-Leverett), coupled systems (plane-strain elasticity and the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in two and three spatial dimensions), and steady-state Darcy flow with heterogeneous permeability. Across these problems, LiL-Q converges in single-digit outer iterations in most cases, even at the coarsest basis sizes and independent of the parameter count. When the exact solution lies in the span of the trial space, the method recovers it to machine precision in a single solve. On the Navier-Stokes benchmarks, it matches or exceeds published PINN solvers with up to two orders of magnitude fewer trainable parameters, without gradient-based optimization.

14.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

A Quantum Encoding of Traveling Salesperson Tours via Route Generation, Cost Phases, and a Reversible Valid-Permutation Oracle

arXiv:2603.21283v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: For a traveling salesperson problem (TSP) of n cities, we present a compact quantum encoding based on a time-register representation of tours. A candidate route is represented as a sequence of n-1 city labels over discrete time steps, with one fixed start city and the remaining cities encoded in binary registers. We describe three ingredients of the construction: uniform route generation over the route register, a reversible validity oracle, and a phase oracle that encodes the total tour cost. The validity oracle checks both that the non-start city labels form a permutation and, for incomplete graphs, that every directed edge used by the route exists. The cost oracle then accumulates the start-edge, intermediate-transition, and return-edge costs into a tour-dependent phase for valid routes. This yields a coherent superposition of candidate routes with feasibility and tour-length information embedded directly in the quantum state. The complete construction uses O(n log n) qubits, while a naive implementation has worst-case elementary-gate complexity O(n^3 log n). The encoding is compatible with amplitude amplification or spectral filtering techniques such as the quantum singular value transform (QSVT) or Grover's algorithm. However, due to the exponentially small fraction of valid tours, the overall complexity remains exponential even when combined with amplitude amplification.

15.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-10

Development of an Open-Access Action Observation Video Library for Upper Limb Motor Rehabilitation

Background: Occupational therapists can improve stroke survivors hand and arm movement and participation in daily activities through action observation (AO). AO involves watching another persons hand or arm complete a movement or task. While research generally supports the use of AO with stroke survivors, there are limited AO videos are available to occupational therapists which makes applying AO challenging. Objective: The purpose of this work is to develop structured and widely accessible tool to support access to AO for stroke survivors, occupational therapists, and researchers. Methods: To develop an AO video library for stroke rehabilitation, functional and non-functional upper limb task deficits were first identified through clinical observations and clinician interviews to establish a prioritized list of daily activities. In collaboration with media production specialists, healthy adult volunteers were recruited and filmed performing these tasks from both first- and third-person perspectives. The recorded videos were then systematically edited, enhanced with instructional title slides, and distributed via a public YouTube channel for clinical application and a categorized digital repository for research purposes. Results: Initial assessments revealed a complete lack of familiarity, awareness, and utilization of AO resources among local occupational therapists, despite high perceived clinical utility. To address this gap, a final library of 150 tasks was established, resulting in the production of 419 finalized, standardized videos featuring six healthy volunteers. For clinical application, these videos were hosted on a free, public YouTube channel organized into 18 functional playlists, while a parallel set was structured into distinct movement categories for research repository storage. Conclusion: By providing a structured and highly accessible tool, this repository enables clinicians, researchers, and caregivers to readily implement evidence-based action observation interventions in both clinical and home settings.

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

MAND: Modality-Aware Novelty Detection for Open-World Egocentric Activity Recognition

Multimodal egocentric activity recognition integrates visual and inertial cues for robust first-person behavior understanding. However, deploying such systems in open-world environments requires detecting novel activities while continuously learning from non-stationary data streams. Existing methods rely on the main fused logits for novelty scoring, without fully exploiting the complementary evidence available from individual modalities. Because these logits are often dominated by RGB, cues from other modalities, particularly IMU, remain underutilized, and this imbalance worsens as catastrophic forgetting accumulates. To address this, we propose MAND, a modality-aware framework for multimodal egocentric open-world continual learning. At inference, Modality-aware Adaptive Scoring (MoAS) adaptively adjusts modality contributions using sample-wise reliability and refines novelty scoring with deviation and disagreement penalties. During training, Modality-aware Representation Stabilization Training (MoRST) preserves the discriminative capacity of each modality across tasks through modality-specific heads and modality-wise logit distillation. Experiments on a public multimodal egocentric benchmark show that MAND consistently improves novel activity detection and known-class accuracy while substantially reducing FPR95, indicating more reliable open-world recognition. The source code is available at \href{https://github.com/HyeJeongIm/MAND}{github.com/HyeJeongIm/MAND}.

17.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-19

Unveiling coherent dynamics in non-Markovian open quantum systems: exact expression and recursive perturbation expansion

arXiv:2506.04097v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce a systematic framework to derive the effective Hamiltonian governing the coherent dynamics of non-Markovian open quantum systems. By applying the minimal dissipation principle, we uniquely isolate the coherent contribution to the time-local generator of the reduced dynamics. We derive a general expression for the effective Hamiltonian and develop a recursive perturbative expansion that expresses it in terms of system-bath interaction terms and bath correlation functions. This expansion provides a systematic tool for analyzing energy renormalization effects across different coupling regimes. Applying our framework to paradigmatic spin systems, we reveal how environmental correlations influence energy shifts and eigenbasis rotations, offering new insights into strong-coupling effects and non-Markovian quantum thermodynamics.

18.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

Understanding Key Features of Time Series Foundation Models from Epidemic Forecasting

arXiv:2606.19560v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Seasonal influenza infects millions of people and causes substantial morbidity and mortality in the United States each year, making accurate short-term forecasting a core public-health need. Reliable forecasts of epidemic time series can inform vaccination timing, hospital staffing, and resource allocation, yet the comparative behavior of modern forecasting architectures on infectious-disease surveillance data remains insufficiently characterized. We address this gap through a systematic evaluation of regional influenza forecasting using influenza-like illness surveillance and influenza-associated hospitalization time series under both temporal and spatial generalization settings for 1-4-week-ahead prediction. We compare classical neural network architectures, numerical transformer-based models, pretrained time series foundation models, and LLM-based forecasting approaches. Across tasks, we demonstrate that a mixture-of-experts model that fuses multiple pretrained forecasters achieves the strongest overall performance, indicating that heterogeneous pretrained representations provide complementary predictive information. Our results further show that numerical transformer-based models produce reliable forecasts, while pretraining provides the largest gains at longer horizons, particularly when the pretraining domain is mechanistically aligned with influenza dynamics. In contrast, LLM-based time series methods underperform relative to numerical forecasters in this setting. Finally, we examine hospitalization information as both an auxiliary covariate and a pretraining source. Hospitalization signals provide complementary improvements in selected settings and clarify when additional surveillance streams enhance the robustness of multi-horizon forecasting. These findings provide actionable guidance on model selection, pretraining strategy, and auxiliary-signal use for influenza preparedness.

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

SAFE-Cascade: Cost-Adaptive Vision-Language Routing for Chart Question Answering

Vision-language models (VLMs) are powerful for chart question answering, but invoking a VLM for every query can be unnecessarily expensive when many questions are answerable from OCR text and lightweight language reasoning. We demonstrate SAFE-Cascade, an interactive system for cost-adaptive chart question answering. Given a chart image and a natural-language question, SAFE-Cascade first extracts chart text with OCR, obtains a provisional answer from a text-only language model, and then uses a learned router to decide whether to accept the text answer or escalate to a VLM. The demo exposes this decision process to users: OCR evidence, text-only answer, routing probability, escalation decision, final answer, estimated cost, and estimated latency are shown side by side. SAFE-Cascade is designed as a transparent interface for understanding when visual grounding is actually needed. Users can upload or select charts, ask questions, inspect the evidence used by each pathway, compare text-only and VLM answers, and adjust the escalation threshold to explore the accuracy-cost frontier. The system is implemented with Azure Document Intelligence for OCR, gpt-5-mini as the text-only model, gemini-2.5-flash-image as the VLM, and a Random Forest router trained on inference-time features. On a held-out ChartQA test split of 375 examples from a 2,500-example experiment, SAFE-Cascade achieves 69.1% unified accuracy with 73.1% VLM invocation, compared with 67.7% accuracy and 100% VLM invocation for the full-VLM baseline. The observed +1.4 percentage-point difference is statistically uncertain, so we interpret SAFE-Cascade as matching full-VLM performance while reducing VLM calls by 26.9% and estimated cost by 9.3%. The demonstration shows how selective modality routing can make multimodal knowledge systems more transparent, tunable, and cost-aware.

20.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-18

TopBench: A Benchmark for Implicit Predictive Reasoning in Tabular Question Answering

Large Language Models (LLMs) have advanced Table Question Answering, where most queries can be answered by extracting information or simple aggregation. However, a common class of real-world queries is implicitly predictive, requiring the inference of unobserved answers from historical patterns rather than mere retrieval. These queries introduce two challenges: recognizing latent intent and reliable predictive reasoning over massive tables. To assess LLMs in such Tabular questiOn answering with implicit Prediction tasks, we introduce TopBench, a benchmark consisting of 779 samples across four sub-tasks, ranging from single-point prediction to decision making, treatment effect analysis, and complex filtering, requiring models to generate outputs spanning reasoning text and structured tables. We evaluate diverse models under both text-based and agentic workflows. Experiments reveal that current models often struggle with intent recognition, defaulting to just lookups. Deeper analysis identifies that accurate intent disambiguation serves as the prerequisite for leading these predictive behaviors. Furthermore, elevating the upper bound of prediction precision requires the integration of more sophisticated modeling or reasoning capabilities.

21.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-16

Re-feeding Is Not Replaying: Measuring Replay Noise in Counterfactual Token-Credit Estimation

Per-token counterfactual credit estimation asks which token in a language-model rollout caused the final answer to be right or wrong: cut the transcript at a pivot, substitute an alternative token, replay continuations, and compare outcomes. Published methods re-feed the transcript prefix as a fresh prompt, assuming this reproduces the state the model passed through during generation. We measure what that assumption costs on a stock inference engine, with a three-pass design: continuations resumed from the verified decode-time KV state, an identical second exact pass (a replica noise floor), and a re-feed pass. Across six configurations and three models (including a GRPO-trained checkpoint), at low-margin decision tokens, re-feeding changes the credit estimate at rates 14-28 percentage points above the replica floor (7-21pp under a treatment-independent conditioning; problem-clustered t = 2.9-6.4). Most changes are zero-boundary crossings of the quantized estimator rather than polarity reversals, and the perturbation is consistent with mean-zero, so averaged quantities are largely safe; but selection is not: a critical-token set chosen by thresholding $|\hat{A}_t|$ under re-feed overlaps the exact-resume selection at Jaccard 0.34-0.90, versus a 0.63-0.96 replica ceiling. A causal confirmation closes the loop: under vLLM's batch-invariant kernels all three passes are identical on every measured channel, with both disagreement rates exactly zero. Replica passes themselves disagree on 9-23% of eligible estimates: single-sample credit measurements at decision tokens are unreliable under any replay. Settings were fixed in advance; exact-pass cache hits in the second campaign are instrumented (100% hit rate, 3,434 pivots); total compute was under 10 USD. We recommend that counterfactual credit studies resume decoder state or use batch-invariant kernels, and report a replica floor.

22.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

TRON: Tracing Rays to Orchestrate a Neural Renderer for 3D Gaussian Reconstructions

We introduce TRON, a rendering framework that combines 3D Gaussian ray tracing with neural rendering to enable realistic and controllable rendering of real-world 3D scenes under novel lighting, dynamic object motion, object insertion, and material editing. Prior approaches that rely solely on physically based rendering (PBR) of Gaussian representations struggle to achieve realistic relighting due to imperfections in reconstructed geometry, material estimates, and light transport estimation. At the same time, neural rendering methods often lack an explicit scene representation, limiting their ability to support interactive editing with fine-grained manipulation. TRON bridges these two paradigms. We use intrinsic decomposition priors from a learned inverse rendering model to regularize the material properties of a Gaussian field, and repurpose a ray tracer to provide radiometric guidance rather than final pixels. By treating this output as a structured 3D scaffold, we empower a lightweight neural renderer to bridge the domain gap between shading-model constrained estimates and photorealistic output. Our key insight is that the combination of explicit 3D knowledge with robust material priors provides speed and controllability, while neural rendering enables the synthesis of photorealistic images. To support real-world scenarios, we train our neural renderer with a multi-stage strategy consisting of large-scale pretraining and targeted fine-tuning on a newly constructed dataset of 2.1M rendered synthetic and real-world frames from 3D reconstructions. TRON outperforms Gaussian-based relighting methods in realism, and prior neural renderers in editability and speed. To the best of our knowledge, TRON is the first method to enable practical interactive applications in captured 3D environments, offering realistic appearance under dynamic geometric, lighting and material conditions.

23.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

HARBOR: Heading Analysis and Reconstruction from Behavioral Observation and Radar

Maritime situational awareness often relies on Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmissions to track vessel movements. However, in operational or conflict scenarios, these data may be unavailable due to signal loss, deliberate deactivation, or intentional spoofing. In such conditions, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery becomes a critical sensing alternative for wide-area maritime monitoring, despite providing only static scene snapshots. This work introduces HARBOR (Heading Analysis and Reconstruction from Behavioral Observation and Radar), a complete pipeline for transforming a single SAR image into predictive motion information without requiring any auxiliary data source at inference time. The method begins with SAR image preprocessing to enhance and segment vessel candidates, followed by automatic detection, size-based classification, and heading estimation using skeleton geometry and local intensity patterns. AIS data are used exclusively during an offline calibration phase to derive vessel-type-dependent motion parameters, which are then applied to generate probabilistic heatmaps of candidate future vessel positions. A case study using real COSMO-SkyMed SAR imagery demonstrates the pipeline on a maritime scene in southern Brazil, showing its ability to extract motion tendencies and generate probabilistic projections of vessel positions in data-denied environments.

24.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

When Agent Automation Becomes Profitable: Quantifying and Insuring Autonomous AI Risk through Trace-Economic Underwriting

arXiv:2606.16465v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI agents can now take irreversible actions in operational systems, but agent-caused losses are still not clearly assigned, priced, or transferred. Providers often disclaim consequential damages, users are left with uncompensated losses, and default human review limits the efficiency gains of automation. We ask when autonomous AI deployment can become economically acceptable despite failure risk. Our answer is to quantify risk at the customer-task-trace episode level and transfer it through insurance. Automation is acceptable when its expected benefit exceeds the premium, control cost, and remaining risk. This requires a defined role with bounded permissions and comparable traces. We introduce trace-economic underwriting, which maps tool-use traces to customer exposure and claimable loss, then uses this representation for pricing, control, and risk transfer. It uses deterministic economic labels rather than an LLM judge. In our trace-to-loss testbed, trace-economic pricing reduces pricing MAE from $17.7K to $569 and removes regressive cross-subsidy. A 300-trace expert audit accepts 295 labels unchanged. On 1,000 real SWE-smith traces, trace-conditioned controls reduce CVaR95 by 72%. Theorem~1 gives a finite-sample scope condition. We release code, labels, and audit sheets.

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

Evaluating LLM Personalization via Semantic Constraint Verification

Current evaluation paradigms for Large Language Model (LLM) personalization rely heavily on brittle surface-matching metrics or computationally expensive LLM-as-a-judge protocols, both of which lack interpretability. To address these limitations, we introduce Natural Language Inference Constraint Verification (NLICV), a scalable, semantically invariant framework that maps sentence meanings to truth-condition sets to verify personalization constraints via a Natural Language Inference (NLI) model. Moving beyond binary scoring, NLICV categorizes LLM behaviors into four distinct modes: personalization, generalization, sycophancy, and failure. Extensive experiments demonstrate that NLICV aligns closely with human annotations while drastically reducing the latency and token costs associated with LLM judges (up to 2100 inference speedup). Finally, through an ablation-based procedure, NLICV pinpoints the exact sentences driving the constraint verification, yielding faithful, understandable evidence for its evaluations.