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01.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

Unveiling the Awareness of Private Health Insurance Coverage among Healthcare Professionals in Freetown, Sierra Leone: Insights Extracted from Their Perspectives.

Authors:
Gary↗L. P↗Kamara↗A. N↗Jimmy↗A. I↗Lebbie↗A. P↗

Our study is an assessment of the knowledge, personal coverage, and related determinants of private health insurance as revealed by healthcare professionals in Freetown, the urban capital of Sierra Leone. This study stands as a precursor for Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), like Sierra Leone, seeking to establish Universal Health Coverage (UHC) to provide healthcare access and coverage through publicly arranged risk pooling, designed to help protect against unmanageable medical costs. In parallel, such countries face significant challenges with achieving sustainable universal coverage due to limited public resources, inefficient allocation systems, uneasy reliance on out-of-pocket payments, and large struggling populations. Our research sheds particular light on how healthcare professionals view their own participation with private healthcare options. A cross-sectional, analytical study was conducted, openly recruiting individuals from various facilities in Freetown. Using the Yamane Formula, a sample size of 109 participants was calculated. STATA 14.0 was used for data analysis. Our findings revealed that 96 (88.9%) participants did not have private health insurance, while 12 (11.1%) did have private coverage. However, 105 (97.2%) reported other modes of health insurance, with only 3 (2.8%) uninsured. Notably, 97.2% expressed willingness to join a private health insurance scheme. Our study found no statistically significant associations between selected indicators (demographic or socioeconomic fac tors) and current insurance coverage among study participants. These results highlight a low prevalence and understanding of private health insurance among healthcare professionals in a representative urban center in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), while acknowledging high willingness to enroll. The lack of any significant determinants suggests other unexamined factors, such as cost, accessibility, or awareness, capable of influencing the adoption and implementation of a universal health program.

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02.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-11

Multi-Rate Mixture of Experts for Accelerating Liquid Neural Network Training

Authors:
Shilong Zong↗Almuatazbellah Boker↗Hoda Eldardiry↗

arXiv:2606.12240v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multivariate time-series data often exhibit complex temporal dependencies, irregular sampling, and heterogeneous dynamics across multiple time scales, making accurate sequence modeling particularly challenging. Traditional recurrent neural networks (RNNs), such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, operate in discrete time and may struggle to effectively capture continuous and irregular temporal behaviors. Liquid Neural Networks (LNNs) address some of these limitations through continuous-time dynamics, but standard LNN architectures typically rely on a single dynamical system, limiting their ability to model heterogeneous temporal patterns. To address these challenges, we propose a Multi-Rate Mixture-of-Experts (MR-MoE) framework built on top of Liquid Neural Networks. In the proposed architecture, multiple LNN-based experts operate at distinct time scales, enabling the model to explicitly separate fast-changing dynamics from slow-evolving temporal trends. A gating network further enables adaptive expert specialization based on input conditions. In addition, we incorporate both feature-level and temporal attention mechanisms to improve robustness, interpretability, and long-range dependency modeling. Feature-level attention suppresses noisy or irrelevant variables, while temporal attention selectively focuses on informative historical states. We evaluate the proposed framework on a complex multivariate time-series prediction task and compare it against strong baselines, including LSTM, monolithic LNN, and standard MoE models. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed MR-MoE framework consistently achieves improved AUROC and AUPRC performance while maintaining favorable computational efficiency. These results highlight the effectiveness of combining continuous-time dynamics, multi-scale expert decomposition, and adaptive attention mechanisms for time-series modeling.

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03.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Beyond Static Leaderboards: Predictive Validity for the Evaluation of LLM Agents

Authors:
Dhaval C. Patel↗Kaoutar El Maghraoui↗Shuxin Lin↗Yusheng Li↗Tianjun Feng↗Chun-Yi Tsai↗Yihan Sun↗Wei Alexander Xin↗Akshat Bhandari↗Tanisha Rathod↗Aaron Fan↗Sanskruti Vijay Shejwal↗…

arXiv:2606.19704v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agent benchmarks are growing fast, but no single benchmark touches more than four or five of the dimensions that deployment exposes. This paper aggregates the largest coordinated deep-dive of one MCP-based industrial-agent benchmark to date: fourteen parallel implementation studies covering new asset classes (including a multi-modal visual extension), alternative orchestrations, retrieval strategies, reasoning modes, infrastructure optimizations, and evaluation-methodology probes. Consolidating those studies with seven prior agent benchmarks, we argue that aggregate-score leaderboards systematically underspecify deployed-agent evaluation. Rankings derived from aggregate scores do not transfer to out-of-distribution settings; recent public-to-hidden competition retrospectives provide direct empirical evidence of this rank instability. We propose ranking configurations by predictive validity, the correlation between in-sample and out-of-sample rank, rather than in-sample mean, and report a twelve-tier measurement apparatus that exposes the deployment-relevant dimensions HELM and its agent-era successors collapse. The position is operationalized through three falsifiable out-of-distribution criteria with explicit thresholds; existing evidence partly supports it but is too thin to confirm. We close with a pre-registered pilot design and a field-level vision for what the next generation of agentic benchmarks should report.

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04.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

Evaluating and Combating the Impact of Concept Drift on the Performance of Machine Learning-Based Phishing Detection Systems

Authors:
Warren Fernando↗Nikos Komninos↗

arXiv:2606.11471v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The expansion of the digital domain has resulted in a substantial increase in digital communication, with email emerging as one of the most prominent channels. The proliferation of email communication is apparent in both professional and personal contexts, thereby creating numerous vulnerabilities for malicious actors to exploit. Spam emails, a form of unsolicited correspondence often bearing malicious intent towards recipients, have been an ongoing challenge for email users since the inception of email technology, and this problem has been exacerbated by the growth of the digital landscape. Email spam filters are integral components of email clients, engineered to identify potentially harmful messages and alert users to their malicious content. Phishing, frequently the initial phase of malware-based attacks, is evolving rapidly, with malware becoming increasingly sophisticated over time. A widely adopted approach for detecting malicious activity within malware and spam domains is the application of machine learning. Our aim is to assess the impact of the evolution within the spam email domain on these machine learning-based detection systems and to explore strategies for mitigating associated performance degradation.

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05.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

A Drug-Specific, Half-Life-Adjusted Framework for Classifying CNS-Active Systemic Therapy Exposure During and After Radiotherapy

Authors:
Pari Mitre↗Drapkin↗Dohopolski↗

Clinical oncology datasets often store systemic therapy as a regimen label with a start date and an end date. Those records are clinically recognizable but can be analytically incomplete when the research question concerns whether a patient was exposed to a concurrent CNS-active drug (cCNS-aD) or an adjuvant CNS-active drug (aCNS-aD) around radiotherapy. Contemporary CNS-oncology studies usually define CNS activity by empiric drug lists and define concurrency by fixed calendar windows, although the literature shows substantial heterogeneity across both concepts. This paper proposes a generalizable framework for converting raw systemic therapy records into reproducible cCNS-aD and aCNS-aD variables, useful in subgrouping for clinical studies. The framework uses a transparent CNS scoring model based on three clinical evidence components: intracranial objective response rate, consensus CNS endorsement, and intrathecal route of administration. It then defines a pharmacokinetic exposure proxy as the recorded end date plus five half-lives. Concurrent exposure is classified by overlap with the radiotherapy interval, while post-radiotherapy exposure is classified by overlap with a prespecified post-RT attribution window. The framework separately identifies post-RT pharmacokinetic persistence and post-RT treatment initiation, allowing investigators to distinguish continued exposure from true adjuvant initiation. This is a methodological framework and reference implementation. Implementation audits and endpoint-specific sensitivity analyses remain necessary before use as a definitive exposure classifier

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

Point Cloud Upsampling through Patch-based Frequency Superposition

Authors:
Marina Ritthaler↗Azhar Hussian↗Vasileios Belagiannis↗Andr\'e Kaup↗

In recent years, neural networks have become the dominant models in most point cloud upsampling methods. Although these approaches are achieving good results, they do have drawbacks, such as a lack of interpretability and data dependency. Moreover, they have to be trained on a dataset that is similar to the test data in order to perform well. To avoid these disadvantages, we propose Point Cloud Upsampling through Patch-based Frequency Superposition (PUtPFS), an optimization-based approach that selects subsets of points and estimates the surface of this set through superpositioning spatial frequencies. Then, new points are placed on this surface. By successively selecting points in the least dense regions of the point cloud, a uniform upsampling can be reached. With this method, we surpass the current best upsampling results in the commonly considered point-to-surface distance. Furthermore, we achieve the best Chamfer and Hausdorff distance among the optimization-based approaches. As an additional advantage, our method does not need any training data and is mathematically interpretable.

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07.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-17

Coherent Dark State Formation of a Lead-Vacancy Spin Qubit in Diamond

Authors:
Yiyang Chen↗Koyo Hirai↗Tzyy Zheng Neo↗Eiki Ota↗Takashi Taniguchi↗Masashi Miyakawa↗Shinobu Onoda↗Toshiharu Makino↗Mutsuko Hatano↗Takayuki Iwasaki↗

arXiv:2605.27841v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A lead-vacancy (PbV) center in diamond exhibits coherent emission above the liquid helium temperature, making it highly attractive for quantum network applications. Here, we report the magneto-optical and spin properties of PbV centers in diamond. We record a spin lifetime of 12 ms at 7.5 K under large off-axis magnetic field. Furthermore, we observe formation of the coherent dark state by coherent population trapping and estimate a spin dephasing time of 177 ns at 6.5 K. This work demonstrates the outstanding thermal robustness of the PbV spin compared to other group-IV centers above 4 K.

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08.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-16

Multi-Modal Attention for Automated Disaster Damage Assessment Using Remote Sensing Imagery and Deep Learning

Authors:
Tewodros Syum Gebre↗Jagrati Talreja↗Leila Hashemi-Beni↗

Timely and accurate disaster damage assessment is crucial for effective emergency response, resource allocation, and recovery. Traditional methods, which often rely on manual inspections or sparse data, are typically slow and error-prone. This paper introduces a novel framework leveraging remote sensing imagery and deep learning to automate building damage classification. Using pre- and post-disaster satellite imagery, our model categorizes buildings into four damage levels: no damage, minor damage, major damage, and destroyed. The core innovation is a multi-modal attention mechanism that fuses bi-temporal features to explicitly detect and assess structural changes. We employ a lightweight ConvNeXT-Tiny backbone to ensure efficient processing without compromising performance. Key contributions include: (1) a cross-attention module for multi-modal data fusion, (2) an optimized preprocessing pipeline for large-scale datasets, and (3) robust data augmentation techniques. Experiments on a large-scale disaster dataset demonstrate an overall classification accuracy of 94.90%. The model effectively discriminates between damage categories and remains resilient to incomplete data. This system significantly improves assessment speed and accuracy, aiding emergency responders in prioritizing interventions. This work advances automated disaster damage detection by integrating multi-temporal imagery with deep learning, offering a scalable solution for real-time response.

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

Floating-Point Networks with Automatic Differentiation Can Represent Almost All Floating-Point Functions and Their Gradients

Authors:
Sejun Park↗Yeachan Park↗Geonho Hwang↗

arXiv:2605.01702v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Theoretical studies show that for any differentiable function on a compact domain, there exists a neural network that approximates both the function values and gradients. However, such a result cannot be used in practice since it assumes real parameters and exact internal operations. In contrast, real implementations only use a finite subset of reals and machine operations with round-off errors. In this work, we investigate whether a similar result holds for neural networks under floating-point arithmetic, when the gradient with respect to the input is computed by the automatic differentiation algorithm $D^\mathtt{AD}$. We first show that given a floating-point function $\phi$ (e.g., a loss function), arbitrary function values and gradients can be represented by a floating-point network $f$ and $D^\mathtt{AD}(\phi\circ f)$, respectively. We further extend this result: given $\phi_1,\dots,\phi_n$, $D^\mathtt{AD}(\phi_i\circ f)$ can simultaneously represent arbitrary gradients while $f$ represents the target values, under mild conditions. Our results hold for practical activation functions, e.g., $\mathrm{ReLU}$, $\mathrm{ELU}$, $\mathrm{GeLU}$, $\mathrm{Swish}$, $\mathrm{Sigmoid}$, and $\mathrm{tanh}$.

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

Amortized Probabilistic Retrieval of Atmospheric CO2 from OCO-2 Spectra Using Deep Learning with Laplace Approximations and Normalizing Flows

Authors:
Alejandro Calle-Saldarriaga↗Felix Jimenez↗Jack Grosskreuz↗Jiazheng Wang↗Jonathan Hobbs↗Matthias Katzfuss↗

arXiv:2606.17413v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Space-based monitoring of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential for constraining the global carbon budget. NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) estimates column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of CO2 (XCO2) using high-resolution spectra. However, current operational retrieval algorithms are computationally expensive and do not properly quantify uncertainties. We present a novel deep learning framework that addresses these challenges. Due to the difficulties of ground-truth data for real satellite observations, we develop and validate our approach using a high-fidelity simulation dataset. This dataset, created to support OCO-2 uncertainty quantification (UQ), incorporates realistic forward model errors. Our architecture encodes spectral bands using a multi-branch neural network and estimates posteriors of the full CO2 column or desired summaries thereof using two scalable UQ methods: Laplace approximations and normalizing flows. Our approach has five key advantages relative to operational "full-physics" solvers: (1) Amortization: Inference is orders of magnitude faster, enabling real-time processing of massive data streams; (2) Model error robustness: By training on simulations that explicitly include model discrepancies, our method accounts for systematic errors often neglected by standard inversions; (3) Point estimate accuracy: We achieve superior predictive accuracy compared to baseline methods; (4) Improved UQ: The probabilistic outputs yield better-calibrated uncertainty estimates; and (5) Non-Gaussian posteriors: When utilizing normalizing flows, our framework successfully models complex, asymmetric posterior distributions, overcoming the limitations of the Gaussian assumption. These results suggest that simulation-based deep learning is a viable path toward next-generation operational processing systems.

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

Can News Predict the Market? Limits of Zero-Shot Financial NLP and the Role of Explainable AI

Authors:
Ali M Karaoglu↗Shreyank N Gowda↗

Can financial news reliably predict short-term stock movements? Despite advances in large language models, this question remains unresolved. We revisit this problem using a zero-shot natural language processing framework, investigating whether models can extract actionable signals from financial news without domain-specific training. We design a structured pipeline that combines zero-shot natural language inference with temporal aggregation, explicitly modelling recency and event-dependent impact horizons when integrating information across articles. To address the need for transparency in high-stakes settings, we introduce a multi-layered explainability framework that links predictions to token-level, article-level, and aggregate evidence, and produces grounded natural language rationales. Across multiple models and prediction horizons, we find that zero-shot approaches consistently fail to outperform simple baselines, with particularly weak performance on negative movements, suggesting deeper structural limitations in mapping news sentiment to short-term price dynamics. However, explainability signals reliably distinguish between trustworthy and unreliable predictions, offering practical value even when accuracy is limited. These findings highlight the limits of zero-shot financial NLP and motivate a shift toward decision-support systems that prioritise transparency and uncertainty awareness. Code: https://github.com/alimert05/zero-shot-stock-xai

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12.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-16

Well-posedness of stochastic parabolic equations with gradient nonlinearities and applications to phase-field models

Authors:
Amjad Saef↗

arXiv:2606.15425v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study well-posedness of stochastic parabolic equations with gradient nonlinearities. Our analysis is based on recent maximal-regularity frameworks for nonlinear stochastic parabolic equations in critical spaces. We extend the existing results by controlling drift and noise coefficient separately. This way we can allow for less regular driving noise in case of subcritical dispersion coefficients. Our approach, based on gluings of local solutions, moreover implies new continuation criteria. We then apply our existence result and the continuation criteria to show global well-posedness of phase-field models of moving boundary problems.

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13.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-15

A Longitudinal Attribute-Conditioned Neural Network for Modeling Health-State Transition Probabilities in Temporally Irregular Data: The LANTERN Framework

Authors:
Bright Kwaku Manu↗Beckett Sterner↗Petar Jevtic↗

arXiv:2606.13880v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Accurate estimation of long-term care transition probabilities is central to disability insurance pricing, reserving, and solvency assessment. Classical actuarial multi-state models commonly rely on Markov, semi-Markov, or proportional-hazard specifications, which provide a direct connection to cohort projection but may be restrictive for irregular longitudinal health data with nonlinear aging patterns and heterogeneous covariate histories. This paper develops a well-calibrated estimator of multi-state transition probabilities for irregular longitudinal health data. The model learns from individual health history, incorporates the time elapsed between observations, and conditions transition probabilities on demographic and socioeconomic attributes. It produces a valid probability distribution over the next observed health state, with four possible states: healthy, mild disability, severe disability, and death. Individual probabilities are aggregated by age group and origin state to form transition matrices compatible with actuarial cohort projection. Using longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study, we compare the proposed estimator with logistic regression, gradient-boosted trees, a recurrent neural network, and a last-state persistence benchmark. The evaluation considers probabilistic accuracy, endpoint discrimination and calibration for severe disability and death, risk concentration, and transition matrix error after aggregation. The proposed estimator improves severe disability discrimination relative to logistic regression and gradient-boosted tree benchmarks, maintains strong calibration, and yields the lowest transition matrix error among the evaluated models in the held-out test analysis. Results show that a structured machine learning estimator can support long-term care transition modeling when judged by calibration and projection fidelity, beyond discrimination.

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14.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

Differential Determinants of Past Behavior and Future Intention Regarding Voluntary Blood Donation: A Cross-Sectional Study of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices in Qingdao, China

Authors:
cheng↗zhang↗Wang↗Dai↗

Background A persistent gap between motivation and action threatens voluntary blood supply. This study examined the publics knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) regarding blood donation, with a particular focus on identifying the different determinants of past blood donation behavior and future willingness to donate. Methods Convenience sampling was used to conduct a cross-sectional survey among 1,058 eligible people in Qingdao, China, between July and November 2025. Data were collected via a self-designed KAP questionnaire. To find independent characteristics linked to previous behavior and future intention, respectively, multivariable binary logistic regression was used. Results Overall, 37.0% of participants (n=391) had a lifetime donation history, while 39.2% (n=415) intended to donate in the next 12 months. Past behavior was positively associated with older age (36-45 years: OR=6.84; 95% CI: 3.21-14.58), higher education (OR=2.06; 95% CI: 1.33-3.17), and interpersonal interaction channels (OR=1.45; 95% CI: 1.01-2.09) but hindered by safety concerns (OR=0.23; 95% CI: 0.16-0.34). Conversely, future intention was positively correlated with male sex (OR=1.69; 95% CI: 1.24-2.29), prior donation history (OR=2.69; 95% CI: 1.87-3.86), having family members or friends in need of blood (OR=2.75; 95% CI: 1.96-3.85), and traditional media exposure (OR=3.33; 95% CI: 2.18-5.10). Higher education was adversely correlated with future intention (OR=0.55; 95% CI: 0.38-0.79). Conclusion There is a substantial disparity between donation motivation and action. The determinants of past behavior and future intention are asymmetric, suggesting that stage-specific interventions are required, using social mobilization for initiating first-time donations, while employing family reciprocity and authoritative communication to sustain long-term engagement.

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

Graph Structured Combinatorial Semi-Bandit with Nonlinear Reward Associations through Separable Signals

Authors:
Christoph Bauschmann↗Setareh Maghsudi↗

arXiv:2606.14650v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The identification of optimal structures within vast arrays of interconnected data necessitates significant sampling- and computational effort. Learning and leveraging underlying signal dependencies can improve efficiency and predictive capabilities considerably, but the ubiquity of nonlinear statistical relations amplifies the complexity of such undertakings. In this paper, we develop novel generic and adaptive strategies equipped with routines for graph-based causal reward modeling, analytic reproducing kernel methods, and Taylor approximation of functional processes. We establish theoretical performance guarantees sublinear in time and linear in data volume over time. Our analyses cover robustness to a multitude of uncertainties arising from noise interference, gradual model convergence, and solution space mismatch. The framework's general appeal is substantiated by a minimalistic set of conditions or reliance on prior estimates, while various outlined modifications address specific or extended settings. To demonstrate practical effectiveness, we conduct numerical experiments using both benchmarked synthetic and real-world transportation datasets.

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

A Dual-Branch Collaborative Framework for Joint Optimization of Underwater Image Enhancement and Object Detection

Authors:
Liyuan Cao↗Zheng Liu↗Guanghao Liao↗Yonghui Yang↗Qi Li↗

Due to wavelength dependent light absorption and scattering, underwater images usually suffer from color distortion and blurred details, which limits underwater object detection performance. Existing underwater image enhancement methods mainly focus on visual quality improvement, while it is still difficult to balance enhancement quality, processing efficiency, and downstream detection performance. Therefore, this paper proposes an efficient dual-branch underwater image enhancement framework for object detection. The detail enhancement branch improves brightness and local contrast to recover texture details in dark regions. The color restoration branch uses adaptive compensation to reduce color distortion and improve color gradation. By combining the complementary outputs of the two branches, the proposed framework provides clearer and more informative images for object detection. On the UIEB and EUVP datasets, the proposed method achieves UIQM scores of 2.249 and 2.576. When applied to the YOLOv8 detection task on the URPC dataset, the proposed method improves mAP50 by 2.1\% compared with the baseline. Extensive experiments show that our method improves object detection in complex underwater scenes, while balancing enhancement quality and processing efficiency.

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17.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

Non-Parametric Ancestry Adjustment for Polygenic Scores

Authors:
Mas Montserrat↗Barrabes↗Bustamante↗C. D↗Ioannidis↗A. G↗

Modern polygenic risk scores (PRS) exhibit shifts correlated with ancestry, leading to erroneous predictions for non-European individuals when models are trained on predominantly European cohorts. Such shifts arise from, among other factors, (1) algorithmic limitations in the ability of PRS model training to detect causal variants, rather than nearby variants with ancestry-dependent correlations to the causal one, (2) under-representation of alleles with higher prevalence in non-European populations in the association study training, and (3) gene-by-environment interactions where the environment is correlated with genetic ancestry. Current ancestry-adjustment methodologies often discretize individuals into population categories and apply a simple affine mapping to reduce these genetic ancestry biases. However, such approaches provide suboptimal adjustments, particularly for admixed individuals. In this work, we introduce a detailed theoretical characterization of ancestry-dependent biases and propose novel methods based on non-parametric neighborhood techniques that provide more accurate empirical results and admit statistical consistency guarantees. Extensive experiments using the UK Biobank demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

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18.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

Postoperative Cognitive Decline in Older Patients with Cardiovascular Disease and Preoperative Mild Cognitive Impairment

Authors:
Mata Gonzalez↗Gonzalez-Colaco Harmand↗Prada-Arrondo↗P. C↗Dominguez-Rodriguez↗Barroso↗Galtier↗

Objective. Older adults undergoing cardiac surgery may be vulnerable to postoperative cognitive decline. However, no studies have examined postoperative cognitive outcomes in older patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) according to preoperative mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This study examined 12-month postoperative cognitive outcomes in older CVD patients according to preoperative MCI diagnosis and explored predictors of postoperative cognitive decline. Method. Twenty-two older CVD patients ([≥]65 years) and twenty-five controls were included. Neuropsychological assessment was conducted at baseline in both groups and repeated 12 months after surgery in the CVD group. MCI was diagnosed using current clinical criteria. Postoperative cognitive change was examined across preoperative MCI groups. Results. Fifty percent of patients met criteria for postoperative MCI, showing high diagnostic stability relative to preoperative frequency (45.5%). The preoperative CVD-MCI group showed a decline in working memory, executive functions, visual memory, and naming, whereas CVD-nMCI group declined only in verbal memory. Furthermore, CVD-MCI showed more heterogeneous postoperative cognitive trajectories of change than CVD-nMCI, who showed stability. Estimated IQ, APACHE-II score, and postoperative frailty were important variables in predicting the postoperative pattern. Conclusions. MCI frequency remained high and stable in older CVD patients across the preoperative and one-year postoperative period. However, this apparent diagnostic stability masks subclinical cognitive decline, particularly among patients with preoperative MCI, who showed greater susceptibility to further impairment. Estimated IQ, APACHE-II score, and postoperative frailty may be considered relevant predictors of outcome. These results highlight the value of preoperative neuropsychological assessment for characterizing postoperative cognitive risk in older CVD patients.

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19.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

An AI Security Agent for Banking: Multi-Vector Fraud and AML Detection Across Retail and Corporate Accounts

Authors:
Joseph Walusimbi↗Joshua Benjamin Ssentongo↗

arXiv:2606.17555v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Banks simultaneously face signature-based fraud (card-not-present attacks, account takeover, ATM cloning) and behavioural financial crime (structuring, layering, mule networks, business email compromise) – two threat families with fundamentally different detection requirements. Static rule engines that reliably catch brute-force and high-velocity events are structurally blind to business-email-compromise (BEC) payment redirection, session hijacking, and money-laundering layering, which are engineered to appear indistinguishable from legitimate activity at the individual transaction or session level. This paper presents an AI security agent for retail and corporate banking that addresses this gap through a three-component fusion architecture operating on two parallel event streams: a transaction stream (card fraud, ACH/wire fraud, AML categories) and a session stream (account takeover, session hijacking, SIM-swap, insider abuse). Each stream combines an LSTM sequence model capturing per-account behavioural history, a statistical velocity/threshold monitor, and a graph/network module capturing account-counterparty relationship patterns (fan-in, fan-out, pass-through ratio) for money-laundering detection. Experiments on a synthetic event log of 237,669 transactions and 113,508 sessions across 13 threat categories and 3,470 simulated accounts demonstrate overall F1 of 0.787 (transaction stream) and 0.867 (session stream) for the proposed model, versus 0.562/0.733 for a rule-based baseline and 0.655/0.713 for an LSTM-only baseline. The agent includes a customer-facing transaction-verification chatbot (96.6% identity verification accuracy, 86.8% mass-reset attack detection) and an analyst case-summary assistant (99.3% action-recommendation F1), with Critical-tier automated response latency under 0.43 ms at the 95th percentile.

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

EMORSION: Examining the Impact of Audio Parameters on Emotional Responses and Immersion in Film

Authors:
Nelly Garcia↗Ruby Crocker↗Bleiz M Del Sette↗Fabrizio Smeraldi↗Charalampos Saitis↗George Fazekas↗Joshua Reiss↗

arXiv:2606.18266v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: EMORSION is an exploratory proof-of-concept study examining how film audio design shapes audience emotion and immersion in acinema setting. Four film scenes were selected across the horror (2) and drama (2) genres, balanced between mainstream and independent productions. For each scene, multiple alternative audio mixes were created by systematically manipulating three core aspects of audio design, frequency (pitch), dynamics (loudness), and directionality (spatial placement). Three audience groups viewed the scenes, with each group exposed to one manipulated mix alongside a control mix for each scene. Audience responses were assessed through a triangulated multimodal framework combining self-reported emotion and immersion via a questionnaire, physiological measures including heart rate monitoring, and video-based motion tracking. The protocol successfully captured measurable, interpretable differences across audio conditions, indicating that even subtle changes in audio design can shape emotional perception and immersion. Unconventional mixes tended to produce greater variability in audience interpretation, while conventional immersive mixes were associated with stronger cross-audience agreement. These findings establish the feasibility of the EMORSION protocol and motivate larger-scale studies to characterise the role of specific audio parameters in shaping audience experience.

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

Enabling Real-Time Point-of-Care Ultrasound Segmentation: A GPU-Free Deployment in Resource-Limited Settings

Authors:
Weihao Gao↗

Ultrasound imaging is the most widely adopted medical modality globally due to its low cost and portability, yet artificial intelligence (AI) deployment remains constrained by reliance on GPU-accelerated models, creating a structural paradox where the cost of "intelligence" exceeds that of the imaging device itself. Here, we present the systematic adaptation and extensive evaluation of UltraSeg, an ultra-lightweight architecture originally developed for colonoscopic polyp segmentation, now engineered for point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) across ten public datasets spanning six anatomical sites (breast, thyroid, kidney, carotid, fetal, and small-animal tumor). We systematically validate both variants in ultrasound domains: UltraSeg-130K (0.13M parameters) achieves 89.7 FPS on single-core CPUs and 34.8 FPS on a refurbished mobile device, while UltraSeg-500K (0.5M parameters) delivers 44.6 FPS on CPU and 16.1 FPS on mobile device. UltraSeg-500K matches or exceeds the Dice performance of the 31M-parameter UNet and approaches 105M-parameter TransUNet in average performance, with superior zero-shot cross-dataset generalization on external validation sets (UDIAT, DDTI). By enabling clinical-grade segmentation without GPU dependency, this work brings AI costs in line with ultrasound accessibility, making advanced diagnostics available in resource-limited settings.

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22.
Nature (Science) 2026-06-09

Daily briefing: Trial to ‘de-age’ cells treats first person

Authors:
Flora Graham↗

The gene-therapy trial aims to treat glaucoma by rejuvenating cells in the optic nerve. Plus, the mystery of how things freeze and encouragement to go out into the sunlight. The gene-therapy trial aims to treat glaucoma by rejuvenating cells in the optic nerve. Plus, the mystery of how things freeze and encouragement to go out into the sunlight.

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23.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-17

LLMCodec: Adapting Video Codecs for Efficient Weight Compression of Large Language Models

Authors:
Rui Wang↗Yan Zhao↗Li Song↗Zhengxue Cheng↗

arXiv:2606.05861v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The rapid development of large language models(LLMs) has led to remarkable advances in natural language processing. However, the increasing scale of these models introduces substantial challenges in terms of storage, transmission, and deployment. Though great efforts have been devoted to model compression and quantization, existing methods often rely on fine-tuning or calibration data, which exhibit limited generalization across different tensor types. In this paper, we argue that video codecs offer a promising solution for LLM compression, due to their inherent compatibility with matrix structured data, configurable compression strategies, and the availability of highly optimized, off-the-shelf implementations. Therefore, we present LLMCodec, a video codec-based LLM compression method that integrates affine quantization with the recent VVC/H.266 video codec. Beyond VVC, we further compare a range of video codecs and encoding profiles to evaluate their impact on compression performance. Experiments on different models demonstrate the robustness and generality of LLMCodec. Notably, on LLaMA-3-8B at 2-bit precision, LLMCodec reduces perplexity by over 1.5x and improves downstream task accuracy by 21% compared with the existing method.

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24.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

Context-Aware Optimization of Follow-Up Intervals for Type 2 Diabetes Care Using Markov Decision Processes

Authors:
Parisa Lotfibagha↗Kristen Miller↗William J. Gallagher↗Elizabeth B. Selden↗Muge Capan↗

arXiv:2606.19092v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Chronic disease management relies on regular patient-provider interactions to follow-up on disease progression and control. For Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), current guidelines prescribe fixed time intervals between subsequent primary care visits for all patients, overlooking heterogeneity in clinical trajectories and patient characteristics. This study introduces a Contextual Markov Decision Process (CMDP) model to optimize subpopulation-specific follow-up interval decisions using Electronic Health Record (EHR) data from 22,154 T2D patients across 10 primary care clinics. Contexts are identified by: i) dimensionality reduction of variables representing the individual health trajectories utilizing Principal Component Analysis, and ii) assigning patients to contexts via principal components and additional patient-level features using clustering. Two distinct contexts emerged, representing a lower- and a higher-risk subpopulation. CMDP-derived policies recommend: (i) follow-up within 1 month if lab value at current visit is unmeasured; (ii) up to 3 months for elevated lab values or recent hospitalizations; and (iii) 6 to 12 months for sustained glycemic control, with shorter follow-up intervals for patients in high-risk context. The optimal policies achieved lower expected cumulative cost than benchmarks (e.g., in the higher-comorbidity context, the CMDP policy reduced cost by about 34.8%, and in the lower-comorbidity context by about 6.4%, relative to an American Diabetes Association-like fixed interval follow-up policy. These findings demonstrate how context-aware approaches can inform adaptive follow-up strategies, and have the potential to advance chronic care management in primary care by synthesizing machine learning and probabilistic decision models.

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25.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

Ensuring Trustworthy Online A/B Testing: Addressing Five Key Questions on CUPED

Authors:
Yu Zhang↗Bokui Wan↗Yongli Qin↗Jinyong Ma↗Yifan Guo↗

arXiv:2606.18750v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: A/B testing has become the gold standard for data-driven decision-making in large-scale online experimentation, providing critical guidance for feature launch, pricing optimization, and user experience enhancement. To maximize statistical sensitivity, many technology companies routinely employ Controlled-experiment Using Pre-Experiment Data (CUPED), a technique that achieves substantial variance reduction while preserving the unbiasedness of estimating the average treatment effect. Despite its widespread adoption, several critical methodological and practical nuances of CUPED remain underexplored. This paper systematically addresses five frequently encountered yet overlooked questions regarding the application of CUPED. First, we provide a comparative analysis of various post-CUPED estimators to identify the optimal adjustment specification. Second, we evaluate the validity of regression-based adjustments and delineate robust variance estimation methods tailored for such frameworks. Finally, we extend our investigation to complex but common scenarios, including multi-arm experiments and two-stage sampling designs. Our findings reveal that in these settings, naive reliance on standard variance estimators can lead to severely misleading inferences. By offering rigorous theoretical insights and extensive experimental validation, this work deepens the conceptual understanding of CUPED. Notably, the recommended methodologies have been successfully deployed and integrated into ByteDance's experimentation platform.

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