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01.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-11

Efficient Time Series Clustering from Multiscale Reservoir Dynamics with Granular-Ball Anchoring Graph Optimization

arXiv:2606.12077v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Time-series clustering remains challenging due to the inherent trade-off between clustering effectiveness and computational efficiency. Similarity-based methods often suffer from quadratic complexity caused by pairwise distance computations, while deep learning-based approaches typically rely on costly iterative training and a large number of trainable parameters. In this paper, we propose MSRGC-Net, an efficient time-series clustering framework that integrates multiscale reservoir computing, granular-ball-based anchoring graph construction, and consensus learning. MSRGC-Net adopts a training-free reservoir computing paradigm to extract multiscale temporal representations from raw time series without backpropagation, significantly reducing computational overhead. To capture the intrinsic structure of the resulting representations, granular-ball computing is employed to adaptively model data distributions via density-consistent regions, yielding compact and robust anchor graph representations. Furthermore, a consensus-based anchoring graph optimization strategy is introduced to effectively align multiscale reservoir representations and integrate complementary information across temporal scales. Extensive experiments on widely used univariate and multivariate benchmark datasets demonstrate that MSRGC-Net consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods in clustering performance while maintaining superior computational efficiency.

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

A Temporal Planning Framework for Disruption Aware Dynamic Route Optimization in Heterogeneous Railway Systems

arXiv:2606.14582v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Efficient route optimization play a vital role in ensuring both safety and punctuality in railway operations. It is very crucial particularly in heterogeneous multi-gauge railway networks with varying train speed, stopping pattern, infrastructure compatibility constraints increase coordination complexity. In single-track systems these challenges are further intensify due to all trains to share the same track and requires frequent track switching.Stochastic disruptions events including blocked tracks, blocked trains, engine failure and speed slowdowns introduces additional unpredictability in operations and deviate the timetable. However, existing studies predominantly focuses on high-level timetabling, omitting operational details such as track switching coordination. As a result leaving decision to human operators, increasing safety risks into railway operations. This study proposes a framework based on temporal planning for dynamic route optimization and disruption management in heterogeneous railway systems. The framework formulates railway operations as a temporal planning problem using PDDL 2.1 with explicitly modeling gauge compatibility constraints and diverse disruption scenarios. It generates conflict-free timestamped operational plans specifying both optimized schedules and executable action sequences. To evaluate the proposed framework, we developed a benchmark problem set with 200 instances using up to 1,000 track points and 120 trains. Two state-of-the-art temporal planners and a plan validator were employed to assessed the framework. The experimental results demonstrate that the framework effectively generates temporal operational plans for heterogeneous railway systems and handles multi-gauge constraints, disruptions, and reduces dependence on manual decision making.

03.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Quantum Coherence and Giant Enhancement of Positron Channeling Radiation

arXiv:2603.28827v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We present a quantum-mechanical treatment of positron channeling radiation in a planar harmonic potential that explicitly accounts for interference between transition amplitudes from different transverse energy levels. Because the planar channel potential for positrons in diamond~(110) is well approximated by a parabola, the transverse spectrum is equidistant, $\varepsilon_n = \Omega(n+\tfrac{1}{2})$, and all $n \to n{-}j$ transitions radiate at the same Doppler-shifted frequency. The sudden-approximation entry of the positron into the crystal produces a Glauber coherent state[Glauber1963] with Poisson-distributed level populations $|c_n|^2 = e^{-n_0}n_0^n/n!$ and mean occupation $n_0 \propto \theta_in^2$. Phase synchronization between the $c_n$ and the dipole matrix elements ensures constructive interference of all contributing amplitudes. Three exact scaling laws follow: (i)~$I_incoh\propto n_0\propto\theta_in^2$; (ii)~$I_coh\propto n_0^2\propto\theta_in^4$; (iii)~$\mathcal{G}\equiv I_coh/I_incoh\approx n_0 \propto\theta_in^2$. Numerically, $\mathcal{G} = 12–31$ for positron energies of $4–14$~GeV in diamond~(110) at $\theta_in=31\;\mu$rad, in agreement with the experimental first-harmonic peak positions of Avakyan et al.[Avakyan1982] to within 15\%. The transition from $N$- to $N^2$-scaling of radiated intensity, driven by quantum coherence, opens a route toward high-intensity monochromatic gamma-ray sources.

04.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Direction-Conditioned Policies via Compositional Subgoal Scoring for Online Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2606.16515v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman theory implies that the optimal goal-conditioned action depends on the goal only through the gradient of the goal-reaching distance at the current state, yet standard online GCRL still conditions the actor on the raw goal – a signal that is geometrically uninformative when the goal is far from the data distribution. We propose Direction-Conditioned Policies (DCP), a fully online method that decomposes goal-reaching into two components sharing one InfoNCE representation $\psi$: a subgoal-scoring step that selects a visited state $z_t$ aligned with the final goal $g$ in $\psi_g$, and a direction-conditioned actor that consumes the unit direction $d_t$ and magnitude $r_t$ from $\psi(s_t)$ to $\psi(z_t)$. The two components train jointly, factor cleanly at deployment (subgoal scoring is removed, while direction conditioning remains with $g$ in place of $z_t$), and admit independent modification at the same $(d_t,r_t)$ interface. We prove three results. First, direction sufficiency under HJB: the optimal action under control-affine dynamics depends on the goal only through the value gradient. Second, a quantitative bound showing that, under mild conditions on the learned representation and assuming the scoring rule returns an on-path $z_t$, the actor's conditioning input at training and at deployment coincide up to representation error and geodesic slack. Third, a controllable-subspace characterization of when directional conditioning fails. Across nine environments, DCP improves over Contrastive RL on most final metrics, with the largest gains on manipulation and obstacle-interaction tasks; a qualitative analysis of the learned $\psi$-distance landscape shows the contrastive representation behaves as an online quasimetric encoding environment topology, and the single failure case (AntSoccer) localizes to a learned-gradient pathology that the theory anticipates.

05.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-18

Expert in Ultrasound Skills: Feasibility of an IMU-video platform to describe technical profiles during focused cardiac ultrasound. Pilot study

Background: Focused cardiac ultrasound (FoCUS) is operator dependent and requires coordinated probe manipulation, image interpretation and iterative visual feedback. Existing assessment approaches often emphasize final image quality or expert rating. We developed Expert in Ultrasound Skills (EXUS) , a platform that synchronizes transducer-mounted inertial measurement unit (IMU) data with ultrasound video, and evaluated its technical feasibility during FoCUS acquisition. Methods: This observational pilot study included 6 operators performing two repetitions of a four-view FoCUS protocol, yielding 12 analytical sessions and 48 planned acquisitions. Feasibility was defined by acquisition completion, video availability, start/stop events, fused IMU-video windows, temporal coverage, complete human label entries and IMU integrity. A 100-image Likert rating task was used to summarize pairwise inter-rater agreement for still-frame image quality assessment. Results: All 48 planned acquisitions were completed with video, start/stop events, fused windows and complete human label entries. Temporal coverage was at least 90% in 47/48 acquisitions. IMU integrity endpoints exceeded the 80% threshold: 43/48 acquisitions had no extreme IMU-derived artifact, 43/48 had no active-segment IMU restart and 44/48 had no complete motion flatline. Mean pairwise exact agreement for the Likert task was 38.9%, with mean quadratic-weighted Cohen's kappa of 0.564. Post hoc profiles varied across duration, visual quality, mechanical load and motor efficiency. Conclusions: EXUS was technically feasible for synchronized IMU-video capture during FoCUS. The pilot supports multimodal acquisition data as a way to describe technical profiles and generate formative feedback hypotheses, but the post hoc indices are not validated competency measures. Keywords: focused cardiac ultrasound; point-of-care ultrasound; inertial measurement unit; medical education; deliberate practice

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

Recursive Binding on a Budget: Subspace Carving in Order-p Tensor Memories

arXiv:2606.11391v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Tensor Product Representations provide the structural fidelity required for symbolic reasoning in models but suffer from exponential dimensionality growth when encoding deep recursive structures. Conversely, Vector Symbolic Architectures maintain constant dimensionality but sacrifice capacity and fidelity due to noisy compression via superposition. In this work, we propose Orthogonal Subspace Carving (OSC), a memory architecture that binds fillers to roles by projecting onto the null space of the role basis before aggregating into a fixed order-p tensor. OSC uses projections to enforce geometric orthogonality between bound structures within a static memory trace. We show that this mechanism decouples the tensor order from the structural depth, enabling deep recursive binding within a constant memory footprint. By performing retrieval via recognition, this construction allows for component vectors that are orders of magnitude smaller than the memory tensor, giving superior memory efficiency in settings involving high superposition. We also show that TPR is a special case of binding in Clifford algebra, and give a Clifford formulation of OSC.

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

Workflow-GYM: Towards Long-Horizon Evaluation of Computer-use Agentic tasks in Real-World Professional Fields

arXiv:2606.11042v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recent years have witnessed the rapid evolution of AI agents toward handling increasingly complex, real-world tasks. However, existing benchmarks rarely evaluate whether agents can operate graphical user interfaces to complete long-horizon, high-value professional workflows across diverse domains. Current GUI benchmarks still predominantly focus on general-purpose software, relatively simple applications, and short-horizon tasks, leaving it largely unknown whether modern agents can follow user instructions to autonomously operate domain-specific professional software and accomplish economically valuable work in an end-to-end manner. To bridge this gap, we introduce Workflow-GYM, a benchmark for long-horizon GUI tasks centered on professional domains and specialized software environments. Through extensive experiments on state-of-the-art models, we find that even the strongest models achieve only slightly above 30% success rates, highlighting that professional long-horizon GUI workflows remain highly challenging for current GUI agents. Further analysis reveals that current agents struggle to maintain long-horizon workflow consistency, frequently exhibiting workflow stage omission, error propagation, objective drift, and insufficient understanding of professional software environments. Our findings provide important insights into the limitations of current agent systems and suggest key directions for the next generation of GUI-agent research.

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

When the Chain of Thought Knows Better: Failure Modes in Multi-Turn Reasoning Models

Failures in multi-turn reasoning models are largely invisible to terminal-score evaluation. A model can lock onto an unsafe stance early in a long dialogue, yet its final-turn refusal rate may appear indistinguishable from a robustly aligned baseline. To expose these hidden temporal dynamics, we propose a trace-level diagnostic - the CoT-Output 2x2 safety matrix. This framework labels every turn along two independent axes (internal reasoning and visible output), yielding four operationally defined failure cells: robust alignment, alignment faking, overt jailbreak, and a distinct failure mode we term context-injection failure (where the CoT maintains safe reasoning, but the visible output produces harm, highlighting a multi-turn manifestation of reasoning unfaithfulness). We evaluate three distilled reasoning targets against a fixed attacker across five oversight conditions, collecting 6750 turn-level observations on the Information-Hazard scenario. Our analysis reveals two reproducible vulnerabilities: an oversight paradox where explicit monitoring cues paradoxically increase alignment-faking rates rather than suppress them, and a context-injection failure where models lock onto unsafe external outputs despite safe internal states. We release the full dataset of multi-turn dialogues and CoT traces to support follow-up trace-diagnostic research.

09.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Transforming Shape Schemas with Composable Property-Graph Queries (Extended Version)

arXiv:2606.14309v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Property graphs may be constrained by schemas that inform both query engines and human users about the shape of valid data, enforcing a contract between data provider and consumer. Composable property-graph queries transform input graphs into output graphs. Then, the question arises of which schema can be expected after one (or several) transformation steps. We investigate how schema constraints can be inferred given an input schema and a transforming query. Specifically, we propose a reasoning procedure that, given an input schema in ProGS and a query in G-CORE infers an output schema. Since graph updates will happen frequently, our inference procedure does not rely on graph instances, such that the computed output schema applies to all graphs originating from any input graph complying with the input schema. Related work has addressed this problem for SPARQL CONSTRUCT queries, encoding it in Description Logics (DLs) so that the output schema is entailed by axioms inferred from input schema and queries. Property graphs and their queries, however, complicate the matter, as property graphs feature label and property annotations as well as first-class edges. Thus, reification has to be used in one way or another, though available DLs lack the means to encode such features directly. We approach this novel challenge via a family of mappings for i) property graphs reified in RDF, aligned with ii) a mapping from ProGS to SHACL and iii) a mapping from G-CORE to SPARQL CONSTRUCT queries. In this manner, schema inference for property graphs becomes manageable, as we break apart the problem through the extra mapping layer and utilize efficient DL reasoners. We develop the metatheory regarding the soundness of inferred schema constraints and the semantic equivalence of mapped schemas and queries.

10.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Augmenting Imaginary-Time Evolution with Local Geometric Information

arXiv:2606.23934v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Imaginary-time evolution (ITE) underpins a broad family of algorithms for ground-state preparation in quantum simulation and quantum many-body physics. In these methods, convergence is governed by the energy variance of the instantaneous state, causing the flow to approach the ground state only asymptotically. We introduce an augmented imaginary-time evolution (AITE) framework that replaces the standard gradient flow on the energy landscape with a geometrically informed descent along locally optimal directions, which are identified by exploiting the higher-order statistical structure of the instantaneous energy distribution. The resulting flow strictly outperforms standard ITE throughout the entire evolution and exhibits two qualitatively distinct regimes: a superlinear convergence regime, followed by an extinction regime in which the energy error vanishes exactly at a finite imaginary time, in sharp contrast to the asymptotic exponential decay of ITE. Standard ITE is recovered in the zero-skewness limit of AITE, implying that the acceleration extends naturally across the broader ITE algorithmic family.

11.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-12

Order-Based Bayesian Network Modeling of Early Detection and Post-Diagnosis Control for Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Type 2 Diabetes

Patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (T2D) are at increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD), the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in this population. Early detection and glycemic control within the first year after diagnosis reduce CVD risk. However, gaps remain in how to operationalize early detection of T2D using Electronic Health Record (EHR) data and quantify its relationship with subsequent CVD risk using longitudinal observations. We developed a probabilistic graph model to analyze the interdependencies between early detection of T2D, post-diagnosis glycemic control, and CVD occurrence. Using a temporally structured Bayesian Network (BN) learned from EHR data of 9,450 primary care patients between 2017 and 2023, we quantified probabilistic dependencies between demographics, diagnostic delay surrogates, glycemic control, and post-diagnosis CVD occurrence. Percentile based thresholds defined risk groups, where individuals with predicted probabilities in the bottom decile ([≤] 10th percentile) were classified as low risk, and those in the top decile ([≥] 90th percentile) as high risk. Results demonstrated heterogeneity in predicted risks across glycemic and cardiovascular outcomes. Predicted probability of developing CVD within the first year after T2D diagnosis ranged from a mean of 5.2% in the low-risk group to 28.9% in the high-risk group, while predicted probabilities of mean Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) [≥] 8% during the first year post-diagnosis ranged from 1.6% in low-risk to 55.1% in high-risk group. Patients with HbA1c at diagnosis [≥] 8% had higher predicted probabilities of first-year post-diagnosis mean HbA1c [≥] 8% (53.3% vs. 1.9%) and high HbA1c coefficient of variation (18.7% vs. 3.1%) compared with those with HbA1c [≤] 6.5%. Incorporating early clinical outcomes refined later risk predictions, with long-term CVD risk reaching 33.5% among high-risk individuals. The proposed model achieved predictive performance comparable to conventional machine learning approaches while providing interpretable relationships for risk stratification in primary care populations.

12.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-17

Smarter edits? Post-editing with error highlights and translation suggestions

As MT quality increases, interest in enhanced post-editing features such as QE-derived error highlights is growing, yet evidence for their usefulness remains limited. In this work, we explore the usefulness of LLM-derived error highlights and correction suggestions based on automatic post-editing (APE). We conduct a study where professional translators (En-Nl) post-edit translations using APE error highlights and correction suggestions and compare productivity, quality and user experience to regular PE and PE with QE-derived highlights. While no condition yielded productivity or quality gains compared to regular PE, APE highlights were better received than QE-derived highlights, and correction suggestions improved overall user experience.

13.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-21

Expanding the GUSome: Structure-guided identification and characterization of gut microbial β-glucuronidases

The gut microbiome-encoded {beta}-glucuronidase (GUS) enzymes have a significant effect on human physiology through their deglucuronidation activity on endogenous and exogenous glucuronides. GUS activity also significantly influences the pharmacokinetics, efficacy and toxicity of various drugs including chemotherapeutic drugs. Given their crucial role in drug metabolism, GUS enzymes have emerged as promising targets for therapeutic intervention. Here, we have identified and characterized 79 unique GUS enzymes through a structure-guided approach. Structural modelling of these GUS enzymes revealed a conserved core and active-site residues with significant variations in the number and nature of the C-terminal domains. A new classification system based on the number and type of additional C-terminal domains is presented for the GUS proteins. Further, GUS enzymes have been categorized into different loop categories linked to their substrate preferences. The relationship between domain architecture and loop-type is explored by sequence similarity network analysis. We could successfully express, purify and validate GUS processing capability of a panel of identified GUS proteins. The nature of oligomer organization has been deciphered by SEC and DLS studies. Further, we have identified additional GUS enzymes capable of processing SN-38G, glucuronidated form of anticancer drug, irinotecan. These newly identified GUS enzymes will offer valuable insights into gut microbial GUS diversity and their role in understanding the population-specific drug-induced adverse effects on human health.

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

CORA: Analyzing and bridging thinking-answer gap in Multimodal RLVR via Consistency-Oriented Reasoning Alignment

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has successfully elicited the reasoning capabilities of large language models, motivating its extension to multimodal scenarios. Existing methods primarily focus on improving the visual coverage of reasoning traces and mitigating visual hallucinations, but underestimate the semantic inconsistency between the reasoning process and the final answer. In this paper, we delve into thinking-answer inconsistency in RLVR for large vision-language models (LVLMs), showing thorough analyses of rollouts collected throughout Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) training process and post-RLVR evaluation outputs that this issue persists during training and remains present during inference. Motivated by the analysis, we propose Consistency-Oriented Reasoning Alignment (CORA), which introduces thinking-answer semantic consistency into RLVR through a lightweight plug-and-play consistency reward model, and further incorporates Hybrid Reward Advantage Splitting (HRAS) to stably coordinate task and consistency optimization. Extensive experiments across representative multimodal reasoning benchmarks and mainstream LVLMs show that CORA improves task performance while effectively mitigating thinking-answer inconsistency, leading to more faithful reasoning traces.

15.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-24

Age of LLM: A Strategic 1v1 Benchmark for Reasoning, Diplomacy and Reliability of Large Language Models under Fog of War

作者:

We introduce Age of LLM, a turn-based 1v1 benchmark in which two LLMs face off on a 13x7 grid to destroy the enemy base. Three stressors are deliberate: fog of war, full diplomacy (messages, ceasefires, ultimatums; uranium kept secret), and a reliability dimension where every turn must follow a strict JSON schema and an illegal action is silently discarded. The engine is private and each match uses a fresh random map seed and opponent, mitigating the data contamination that affects public benchmarks. Models receive a (near) rule-only prompt with no build-order advice (two tactical seed phrases were present during data collection; see Section 2.7). We benchmark 15 reasoning models across 54 matches and 5,258 actions. Findings: (1) the nuclear rush dominates (78% on the rules-coherent v0.11+ sub-corpus; 85% corpus-wide) with a sole-launcher signature that is largely mechanical under secret-simultaneous launch rules, not a cognitive deterrence failure; (2) military conquest is rare but faster (12.3 vs 18.9 turns); (3) diplomacy is prolific yet almost never consummated; (4) ~58% of illegal actions are fog/state errors, making the illegal-action rate a measure of belief-tracking; (5) – the least established, and the only one we label exploratory – a weak link associates reliability with winning. The corpus is small, unbalanced and not side-swapped, so the ranking is a preliminary descriptive view, not a contribution. Beyond ranking, the turn-by-turn traces of actions and messages make the corpus a lens on how LLMs reason under adversarial uncertainty – their belief-tracking, spontaneous deception, and per-model cognitive "personas" – which we frame as a future research direction. We release the replay format, an isometric viewer and all replays; engine source on request.

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

Multi-Agent Framework for Audit Risk Assessment with Explicit Uncertainty and Evidence Conflict Modeling

arXiv:2606.15640v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Audit risk assessment increasingly benefits from combining heterogeneous evidence sources, yet existing approaches typically produce point predictions without quantifying how well different evidence streams agree. We propose UMAR (Uncertainty-Aware Multi-Agent Risk Assessment), a framework that employs three specialized agents: an MD&A Text Agent, a Financial Ratio Agent, and a CAM Agent, each producing independent risk scores with calibrated uncertainty estimates. An Uncertainty Aggregator based on Dempster-Shafer evidence theory fuses these scores while explicitly measuring inter-agent conflict. We evaluate UMAR on a U.S. dataset of 3,200 firm-year observations from SEC 10-K filings (2019-2023), with financial restatement as the target label. Experimental results show that UMAR achieves an AUROC of 0.782 and a PR-AUC of 0.341, outperforming logistic regression, XGBoost, FinBERT, and single-agent and dual-agent LLM baselines. UMAR attains the lowest expected calibration error (ECE = 0.052) among all methods and identifies evidence-conflict patterns that correlate with actual restatement risk, offering auditors potentially actionable and interpretable risk signals.

17.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

T Cell Receptor repertoire analysis reveals antigenic convergence and immunotherapeutic opportunities in Prostate Cancer

Background: The T-cell receptor {beta} (TCR{beta}) repertoire reflects antigen-driven adaptive immune responses and provides insight into tumor-immune interaction. In prostate cancer (PCa), the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment limits effective T-cell activation, and the antigenic drivers shaping intratumoral TCR repertoires remains poorly defined. This study aimed to characterize matched tumor and peripheral TCR{beta} repertoires from treatment-naive PCa patients and to identify shared clonotypes and antigenic specificities associated with disease severity. Methods: Next-generation sequencing was used to profile TCR{beta} repertoires from matched tumor biopsies and peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained from treatment-naive PCa patients. Repertoires clonality, diversity, and was assessed using established metrics. Antigenic convergence was evaluated using GLIPH2 to identify shared CDR3{beta} motifs and predicted tumor-associated antigen (TAA) recognition, followed by functional validation using IFN-{gamma} ELISpot and T-cell expansion assays. Results: Tumor-derived TCR{beta} repertoires displayed reduced richness and increased clonality compared with peripheral blood mononuclear cells, consistent with local antigen-driven expansion. High-grade tumors demonstrated greater interpatient clonotype sharing and motif-level convergence, indicative of recognition of common TAAs. GLIPH2 analysis associated expanded clonotypes with epitopes derived from prostate-specific G-protein coupled receptor (PSGR), prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), and prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Functional validation confirmed that peptide pools containing PSGR- and PSMA-derived epitopes induced IFN-{gamma} production and antigen-specific T-cell proliferation in vitro. Conclusions: These findings reveal an oligoclonal, antigen-driven intratumoral TCR{beta} landscape and identify PSGR and PSMA as immunogenic, potentially actionable targets. Integration of TCR profiling with antigen discovery pipelines may support the development of TCR-based biomarkers and precision immunotherapeutic strategies in prostate cancer.

18.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24

Digital exclusion and mental health in UK Armed Forces veterans: findings from the Veterans Digital Needs Study

Background: Public services are increasingly delivered through digital platforms. Although digital health may improve access and scalability, they may also widen inequalities for people who lack reliable access, confidence, skills, affordability or trust. Objective: This study examined the prevalence of self-reported digital exclusion among UK veterans and assessed its association with depression, anxiety and loneliness. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted between July 2025 and March 2026. Participants were UK Armed Forces veterans and resident in the UK. The survey collected sociodemographic, military service, digital access and health data. Self-reported digital exclusion was defined as reporting feeling excluded or disadvantaged due to lack of digital access or skills. Probable depression, anxiety and loneliness were assessed using the PHQ-2, GAD-2 and three-item UCLA Loneliness Scale, respectively. Associations between digital exclusion and each outcome were examined using adjusted multivariable logistic regression. Results: Of 1,911 responses received, 1,607 were included after data quality exclusions. Among participants with valid responses to the primary digital exclusion item, 553 (41.7%) reported digital exclusion. Digital exclusion was more common among females, younger veterans and those with lower household income. Probable depression, anxiety and loneliness were more prevalent among digitally excluded participants than among non-excluded participants. In adjusted models, self-reported digital exclusion was associated with higher odds of probable depression (AOR 1.38; 95% CI 1.04 to 1.83; p=0.028), probable anxiety (AOR 1.63, 95% CI 1.23 to 2.16; p

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

Fast Human Attention Prediction for Fixation-guided Active Perception in Autonomous Navigation

Human visual attention relies on structured scanpaths to efficiently process scenes, yet instilling this behavior into robot autonomy is in its infancy and hindered by the high,computational costs of existing predictive models. To address this, we introduce GazeLNN, a computationally lightweight,scanpath prediction model that leverages Liquid Neural Networks as its recurrent engine and employs MobileNetV3 for feature extraction. Operating auto-regressively, the architecture predicts sequential fixation heatmaps conditioned on the current visual stimulus and fixation history. Despite requiring only 0.61 GFLOPs, GazeLNN achieves state-of-the-art performance on the MIT Low Resolution dataset achieving 0.47 ScanMatch score. It outperforms existing recurrent baselines across diverse evaluation metrics, while reducing computational costs by 99.40% and accelerating inference by up to six times. To investigate the role of human attention modeling in robot autonomy and demonstrate the practical utility of this highly efficient architecture, we integrate GazeLNN into an active camera-robot control policy trained via Reinforcement Learning. This integration enables human-fixation-guided perception during autonomous navigation, validated through successful real-world deployments on an aerial robot.

20.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

Lighting-aware Unified Model for Instance Segmentation

Foundation models like the Segment Anything Model (SAM) demonstrate impressive zero-shot generalization but frequently degrade under diverse real-world illumination, particularly for instance segmentation. In this work, we address this limitation by developing Lighting Convolutional-Attention (\lca{)}, an adapter module that enhances segmentation robustness without fine-tuning the heavy backbone. \lca{} employs a dual-branch architecture to process RGB features alongside contrast maps, enabling physically motivated sensitivity to structural changes rather than illumination artifacts. We optimize \lca{} through a pairwise training strategy, introducing a targeted loss term that explicitly penalizes discrepancies between clean images and their corresponding illumination variants. To evaluate and support this architecture, we conduct a comprehensive empirical study across multiple existing benchmarks and present a novel Unity-based synthetic dataset specifically designed to accurately replicate complex real-world lighting conditions. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our approach successfully bridges the domain gap, delivering superior lighting-robust segmentation.

21.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Offline Channel-Independent QAOA Angles for RIS Power Aggregation: Unit-Circle Phase Dictionaries and Infinite-Size Spin-Glass Limits

arXiv:2606.24540v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) maximize received power by setting per-element phases. Discrete-phase optimization is NP-hard in the worst case, while the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) applied to RIS faces limited phase alphabets, either per-problem angle optimization or uncharacterized training cost exposed to barren plateaus, and no scalable performance benchmark. We introduce a $2^{M}$-phase $\theta$ dictionary for optimizing power $\|\mathbf{A} \, e^{j\theta}\|^{2}$ having $K \times N$ channel matrix $\mathbf{A}$ and QAOA angle offline optimization with instance and size-independent infinite-size limit of the mixed-$q$ Gaussian ensemble of Basso et al. Our design bounds the spin-Hamiltonian interaction order to at most quartic for any $M$, and the deployed order-2 reduction lies below the even-$q\!\ge\!4$ regime in which constant-level QAOA limitations are proved. We perform analytical, state-vector, matrix-product-state and Pauli-path-simulation numerical studies for $N=K \leq 100$ and QAOA depth $p=9$, verifying offline angle transfer to Rayleigh, Rician/line-of-sight, cascaded double-fading and spatially-correlated RIS channels at $N\!\in\!\{5,12\}$. We observe performance reaching a near-optimal multi-start single-flip local-search reference for $N\!\le\!16$ under order-2 modeling with $2^{5}{=}32$-phase dictionary while the order-4 model shows a performance ceiling below the classical reference. The approach suggests a route to near-optimal large-$N$ performance on future fault-tolerant (FTQ) quantum computers, which enable the higher-depth QAOA circuits.

22.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

Surflo: Consistent 3D Surface Flow Model with Global State

Geometry is invariant to viewpoint, which makes any collection of images a redundant encoding of a single 3D state. Existing feed-forward reconstruction models fail to exploit this: per-view methods emit overlapping, unaligned pointmaps that grow linearly with input count, while global-latent methods commit to a fixed, low-resolution output. We introduce Surflo, which compresses a variable number of unposed RGB views into K latent tokens-one global state-and decodes oriented 3D surface points by independently transporting them from noise onto the surface via flow matching. This frees the output from any fixed grid or token budget: the same latent yields from a few thousand to a million points in a single forward pass. To suppress the local inconsistencies inherent to independent per-point decoding, an inference-time guidance term correlates nearby points by injecting a photometric gradient during ODE integration. Surflo matches or surpasses feed-forward baselines on surface metrics, runs an order of magnitude faster than optimization-based methods that require hundreds of views, and is the only feed-forward approach to combine a global latent with arbitrary-resolution decoding.

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

Retrofitters, pragmatists and activists: Public interest litigation for accountable automated decision-making

arXiv:2511.03211v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper examines the role of public interest litigation in promoting accountability for AI and automated decision-making (ADM) in Australia. Since ADM regulation faces political and geopolitical headwinds, effective governance will have to rely on the enforcement of existing laws. Drawing on interviews with Australian public interest litigators, technology policy activists, and technology law scholars, the paper positions public interest litigation as part of a larger ecosystem for transparency, accountability and justice with respect to ADM. The paper explores the tactics and strategies of what one participant described as 'retrofitting' old laws to ADM. These go beyond creative legal argumentation, to encompass practices of community-building, collaboration on theories of change, canny selection of clients and causes of action, and the alignment of the interests of stakeholders in litigation. Naturally, the paper also contends with the limits of these strategies, and of the Australian legal system. Where limits are, however, capable of being overcome, the paper presents findings on urgent needs: the enabling institutional arrangements without which effective litigation and accountability will falter. The paper is relevant to law and technology scholars; individuals and groups harmed by ADM; public interest litigators and technology lawyers; civil society and advocacy organisations; and policymakers.

24.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Starting, stopping and restarting. Patterns of Methylphenidate Use over 14 years in a large public health system

Background Persistence with stimulant medication is poor in children and adolescents with ADHD, and the evidence base is derived predominantly from high-income countries. We describe methylphenidate utilisation patterns and predictors of 12-month retention across 14 years in a large South African public health service. Methods Retrospective cohort study using routine pharmacy data from the Western Cape provincial health service (2011-2024). Children aged 5-18 at first prescription were included. Treatment episodes were defined as continuous prescription sequences with no gap exceeding 90 days and classified as initiations or restarts. Logistic regression modelled 12-month retention against early visit frequency and formulation type as pre-specified exposures. Findings 421,925 prescription events for 23,243 children across 115 facilities generated 65,885 treatment episodes. Median age at first prescription was 10 years (IQR 8-12); 77.6% were male. Kaplan-Meier 12-month survival was 28.2% for initiations and 15.4% for restarts, substantially below high-income country comparators. A quarter of all initiating prescriptions were not followed by a subsequent dispensing event; nearly 40% of patients had three or more treatment episodes. Early visit frequency was the strongest predictor of 12-month retention (high vs low: OR 2.85, 95% CI 2.65-3.06). The sustained-release formulation effect was present but attenuated on multivariable adjustment. Treatment re-initiations showed a marked seasonal pattern consistent with the South African school calendar. Interpretation Twelve-month retention was markedly lower than high-income country rates. Against a backdrop of high attrition, both early visit frequency and sustained-release formulation access predicted persistence; clinical engagement and reducing structural barriers to access are modifiable factors in this setting. Funding None.

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arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-19

Algebraic Dead Directions in LayerNorm Transformers: A Forward-Pass-Only Diagnostic at LLM Scale

arXiv:2606.19491v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Pretrained transformers sit near singular minima of the loss, where the Fisher information metric degenerates along dead directions: directions in parameter space along which the directional Fisher vanishes. Locating such a direction normally needs a forward pass and an eigendecomposition of activations, or a sampling-based complexity estimate; none returns a direction computable from the network's parameters alone. We give one, for LayerNorm transformers. The inverse-scale direction $\gamma^{-1}/\|\gamma^{-1}\|$ of the LayerNorm affine is an exact algebraic kernel of the post-final-norm centred activation covariance, for any input distribution, and induces a corresponding dead direction in parameter space. It is read from the LN scale parameter alone, with no forward or backward pass and no eigensolve: the cheapest dead-direction read, specific to LayerNorm. We test it on $14$ pretrained transformers ($9$ LayerNorm, $5$ RMSNorm; $160$M-$35$B; language and vision objectives). At random initialisation the predicted direction matches the measured bottom singular direction (one forward pass, direct SVD) to four decimal places on $9/9$ LayerNorm models, and is correctly absent on $5/5$ RMSNorm models, which lack the mean-subtraction projector that creates it. On the trained checkpoint the covariance eigenvalue along this direction deepens by ${\sim}10^3\times$ and further dead directions open; the random-init-to-trained gap is a one-forward-pass, per-checkpoint readout of singular structure along the predicted coordinate. Two consequences follow in closed form: the residual stream's smallest singular value is preserved block-to-block on $13/14$ transformers measured on their own input distribution, the one exception (Gemma$4$-$31$B) a genuine dead direction the same read pinpoints; and the kernel direction's presence classifies a transformer's normalisation from the parameters alone.