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01.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19

Linear Recurrent Unit with Semantic Modulation for Image Super-Resolution

Linear recurrent unit (LRU), designed with a principled formulation for stable linear recurrence, has demonstrated promising accuracy and robustness on long-range dependency tasks. However, its static parameterization and single-scan method limits its applicability to 2D vision tasks. In this study, we propose a LRU-based restoration network with a semantic modulating unit (SMU) to achieve a harmonious balance between performance and efficiency in single-image super-resolution. The SMU plays three key roles: LRU modulation, spatial categorization, and feature enhancement through learned prototype. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method quantitatively and qualitatively surpasses recent state-of-the-art methods. Notably, our approach achieves superior performance with computational complexity on par with existing methods. The source code and models are available at https://github.com/MingyuChoi-run/LSM

02.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-11

The $K$-th nearest neighbor random walk on a Poisson point process gets trapped

arXiv:2606.11271v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The $K$-th nearest neighbor random walk $(X_n)_{n \geq 0}$ on a homogeneous Poisson point process $\chi$ on $\R^d$ ($d\geq 1$), starts at the origin and at each step picks its next Poisson point among its closest neighbors according to i.i.d. labels having the same distribution as $K$. Our main result (Theorem 1) states that the number of Poisson points visited by $(X_n)_{n \geq 0}$ admits an exponential decay whenever the random variable $K$ has a bounded support (BS). In particular, the $K$-th nearest neighbor random walk visits finitely many Poisson points if and only if $K$ satisfies Assumption (BS). To prove it, we introduce the key notion of pioneer point which allows us to deal with the region of $\R^d$ already explored by $(X_n)_{n \geq 0}$. Still under Assumption (BS), we also prove an exponential decay for the Euclidean length of the trajectory performed by $(X_n)_{n \geq 0}$ (Theorem 2). Finally, and quite surprisingly, we exhibit an example of label distribution with bounded support for which the $K$-th nearest neighbor random walk discovers new Poisson points after a number of steps whose tail distribution is at least polynomial (Theorem 3).

03.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Deep Learning-Based Lunar Crater Terrain Relative Navigation

arXiv:2606.14776v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Accurate position estimation is crucial for the successful implementation of future lunar landings using autonomous vehicles, especially in dangerous environments with sparse terrain features. In this paper, we propose a terrain relative navigation (TRN) algorithm combining our deep-learning crater detector, which was designed specifically for the NASA Crater Detection Challenge problem, and an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Our detector analyzes crater features from the monocular images acquired from orbit, and their matches with craters from a global database are identified via a Hungarian assignment approach followed by the consensus-based outliers removal method. The estimated measurements are then used to refine an EKF, where spacecraft pose estimation in the Lunar-Centered Lunar-Fixed (LCLF) frame of reference, augmented with altitude aiding information, constrains radial drift. The simulation results indicate that even if the spacecraft is off from its actual location up to 5 km, TRN could recover from this situation, achieving navigation error reduction to a few hundred meters. It should be noted that in order to maintain crater feature correspondences, it is important to match the image resolution and the scales within the scene to the detector training set distribution.

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

LLM-Based Visual Explanation Evaluation Framework for Assessing the Explainability of Facial Skin Disease Classification Models

作者:

This study proposes a domain-specific LLM-based Visual Explanation Evaluation Framework for assessing Grad-CAM explanations in facial skin disease diagnosis models. While previous studies have primarily focused on improving classification performance through data augmentation techniques, relatively few studies have systematically examined whether model explanations are grounded in clinically relevant lesion regions. In this study, geometric augmentation, color-based augmentation, and mixed augmentation strategies were applied to facial skin disease classification models based on EfficientNet-B0, MobileNetV3, and ResNet18. Grad-CAM was employed to generate visual explanations representing the models' decision-making processes. Furthermore, an LLM-as-a-Judge evaluation framework was designed using GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, and Claude Sonnet 4.6 to assess Grad-CAM explanations from the perspectives of lesion localization and explanation trustworthiness. To improve evaluation consistency and clinical grounding, a progressive prompt engineering strategy was introduced, incorporating evaluation rubrics, clinical knowledge, penalty rules, and structured output formats.

05.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Beyond Static Endpoints: Tool Programs as an Interface for Flexible Agentic Web Services

arXiv:2606.19992v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In the agentic web era, LLM-based agents increasingly invoke web services as tools, yet most interfaces remain static endpoints that poorly express long-horizon workflows with loops, conditionals, joins, and retries. We present ToolPro, which represents an agent's tool intent as an executable tool program that compactly encodes multi-step service interactions with explicit effect types. ToolPro combines constraint-guided program construction, effect-aware replay for exactly-once state-modifying calls, and a profile-driven policy that decides when program execution outperforms stepwise calling. We instantiate ToolPro over MCP-style services with WebAssembly sandboxing and evaluate it on diverse workflows of real-world applications. ToolPro reduces end-to-end latency by up to 53.4\% and client-side traffic by up to 96.1\%, with larger gains under higher network latency and workflow complexity.

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

Quantum learning with a single-atom sensor

arXiv:2606.15071v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The ability to gather information and to act upon it is at the core of every learning agent. But what is the impact of quantum mechanics on an agent's ability to sense external inputs and to translate them into actions? Here we address the question for a prototype task of learning agency at the quantum scale: rotating a single spin based on information gathered by a single atom. We determine the ultimate performance limit for this task, revealing a fundamental tradeoff between entanglement at the sensing stage and coherence at the action stage: if the single-atom sensor is not entangled with the quantum system serving as the agent's internal memory, then the best learning strategy requires a coherent transfer of quantum information from the sensor to the system that controls the agent's actions. In contrast, if the sensor is initially entangled with the agent's memory, then the transfer of quantum information is no longer necessary. Our results indicate that the quantum properties of the sensor radically affect the optimal way to convert external stimuli into actions, revealing a link between quantum sensing and the behavior of quantum agents.

07.
PLOS Computational Biology 2026-06-18

Ten simple rules for turning your qualifying exam into an NIH-style fellowship proposal: A guide for graduate students

by Courtney Peña-Lima, Cameron S. Bader, Brendan K. Ball, Troy C. Dildine, Mekhala V. Dissanayake, Iris van ‘t Erve, Albina Ibrayeva, Amy Nippert, M.K. Quinn, Chelse Spinner, Samuel Thompson, Antonio Tomasso, Crystal M. Botham Qualifying exams, often referred to as “quals” or candidacy exams, are an important milestone in doctoral programs. Although the style of quals varies greatly by program and institution, it is usually a proposal that requires students to develop research ideas as well as their scientific writing skills. Many quals are modeled after funding mechanisms that graduate students can apply to and on a topic that the student will pursue in their dissertation. This paper offers graduate students a step-by-step guide on how to turn their quals into a fellowship-style research proposal, using National Institutes of Health (NIH) mechanisms as a benchmark, as this is the norm within US research institutions. This paper will be most useful for students who have completed or are in the process of completing proposal-based qualifying exams, usually in the second year of a doctoral program.

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

Latent Thought Flow: Efficient Latent Reasoning in Large Language Models

arXiv:2606.16222v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly rely on intermediate reasoning, yet explicit Chain-of-Thought (CoT) suffers from a linguistic space bottleneck: each thought must be decoded into tokens, causing high inference overhead. Latent reasoning moves deliberation into continuous space, but existing methods mostly learn deterministic or reward-maximizing paths, lacking a principled way to allocate probability across trajectories with different correctness and costs. We propose Latent Thought Flow (LTF), which models reasoning as variable-length continuous trajectories and trains a sampler to match a reward-induced posterior over answer quality and computation cost. We instantiate this with a continuous GFlowNet using stochastic latent transitions. To handle sparse answer supervision, we introduce an Entropy-Weighted Subtrajectory Balance objective for intermediate rewards and a reference-prior regularizer to anchor exploration. Experiments under finetuning and transfer learning settings show that LTF outperforms explicit CoT and latent reasoning baselines, improving accuracy by 9.5% while reducing reasoning length by 27.2% on average compared with strong latent reasoning baselines.

09.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-12

Block algebra for morphing circuits

作者:

arXiv:2606.12724v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Morphing circuits are a new paradigm for quantum error correction that relaxes hardware requirements. We present four constructions for CNOT-based CSS morphing circuits with explicit qubit connectivity degrees. All four constructions are specified in block algebra notation, with entries in algebras generated by permutation matrices. The first three are obtained by rewriting existing surface- and color-code morphing circuits; the fourth is a new three-round construction modeled on the 6.6.6 color code. The surface-code construction recovers the morphing circuit of Ref. [ST25] for two-block group algebra codes. Numerical search then instantiates these permutation matrices using regular representations of finite groups. [ST25] M. H. Shaw and B. M. Terhal, Phys. Rev. Lett. 134(9), 090602 (2025).

10.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-18

A Novel Correction Method for QT Interval in the Presence of Left Bundle Branch Block Morphology

Background Accurate assessment of the QT interval is challenging in the presence of QRS prolongation, such as during ventricular pacing or bundle branch block. Current correction methods are heterogeneous and lack consensus. To evaluate the relationship between QRS duration and QT interval during ventricular pacing and to develop a practical correction method for QT assessment. Methods In this prospective single-centre study, 94 patients undergoing electrophysiology study for supraventricular tachycardia were included. Standardised pacing was performed at the same cycle length from the right ventricular (RV) apex, high output and low output pacing from His catheter, and coronary sinus (reference). QRS and QT intervals were measured from 12-lead ECGs. Changes in QT (QT) and QRS duration (QRS) were analysed using linear regression and mixed-effects modelling. QT correction formulas of the form QT corrected = QT N x QRS were evaluated using Bland-Altman analysis across multiple coefficients. Results A significant positive correlation between QRS and QT was observed across all pacing sites (r = 0.52-0.74, p < 0.001). In mixed-effects modelling, QRS was a strong independent predictor of QT (0.59, p < 0.001), with no significant interaction between pacing site and QRS, supporting a consistent relationship across pacing locations. Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated that correction coefficients of 0.65-0.70 minimised systematic bias compared with lower coefficients, with similar precision across models (SD 16 ms) and no evidence of proportional bias. A coefficient of 0.65 provided the most balanced performance between bias and variability. Conclusion QT prolongation during ventricular pacing is primarily driven by QRS widening and follows a consistent linear relationship across pacing sites. A simple correction using QT corrected = QT 0.65 x (QRS 100 ms) provides a practical and accurate method for QT assessment, with potential clinical applicability in patients with conduction abnormalities or ventricular pacing.

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

Mitigating Disparate Impact of Differentially Private Learning through Bounded Adaptive Clipping

arXiv:2506.01396v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Differential privacy (DP) has become an essential framework for privacy-preserving machine learning. Existing DP learning methods, however, often have disparate impacts on model predictions, e.g., for minority groups. Gradient clipping, which is often used in DP learning, can suppress larger gradients from challenging samples. We show that this problem is amplified by adaptive clipping, which will often shrink the clipping bound to tiny values to match a well-fitting majority, while significantly reducing the accuracy for others. We propose bounded adaptive clipping, which introduces a tunable lower bound to prevent excessive gradient suppression. Our method improves worst-class accuracy by over 10 percentage points on Skewed and Fashion MNIST compared to unbounded adaptive clipping, 7 points compared to Automatic clipping, and 5 points compared to constant clipping. The code is available at https://github.com/TrustworthyMLHelsinki/adaptive-clipping-fairness.

12.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-19

MiqraBERT: Regression-Based Sentence-BERT Finetuning for Biblical Hebrew Parallel Detection

Textual reuse pervades the Hebrew Bible, yet the computational methods used to detect it still rest largely on lexical overlap, and they falter once a parallel involves paraphrase, lexical substitution, or syntactic reworking. This paper introduces MiqraBERT, a Sentence-BERT model finetuned from AlephBERT (a Modern Hebrew encoder) for verse-level semantic similarity in Biblical Hebrew. The training set comprises 1,650 labeled verse and half-verse pairs: 825 true parallels drawn from the Chronicles synoptic material and from foundational studies of poetic parallelism, balanced against 825 randomly sampled negatives. Through cosine-similarity regression, the model learns an embedding space in which parallel verses cluster together and unrelated verses move apart. We evaluate separation with distribution-based metrics, Wasserstein distance and the overlap coefficient, across ten random seeds. MiqraBERT improves distributional separation 2.7-fold over the pre-trained baseline and reduces the ambiguous overlap region from roughly 24% to about 6%. Narrative synoptic parallels reach a recall@10 of 87.1%; poetic parallels remain difficult, below 9%. This genre-dependent asymmetry confines the model's reliable scope to narrative textual reuse. MiqraBERT is publicly available at https://huggingface.co/davidmsmiley/MiqraBERT

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

PLATE: Plasticity-Tunable Efficient Adapters for Geometry-Aware Continual Learning

arXiv:2602.03846v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We develop a continual learning method for pretrained models that requires no access to old-task data, addressing a practical barrier in foundation model adaptation where pretraining distributions are often unavailable. Our key observation is that pretrained networks exhibit substantial geometric redundancy, and that this redundancy can be exploited in two complementary ways. First, redundant neurons provide a proxy for dominant pretraining-era feature directions, enabling the construction of approximately protected update subspaces directly from pretrained weights. Second, redundancy offers a natural bias for where to place plasticity: by restricting updates to a subset of redundant neurons and constraining the remaining degrees of freedom, we obtain update families with reduced functional drift on the old-data distribution and improved worst-case retention guarantees. These insights lead to \textsc{PLATE} (Plasticity-Tunable Efficient Adapters), a continual learning method requiring no past-task data that provides explicit control over the plasticity-retention trade-off. PLATE parameterizes each layer with a structured low-rank update $\Delta W = B A Q^\top$, where $B$ and $Q$ are computed once from pretrained weights and kept frozen, and only $A$ is trained on the new task. The code is available at https://github.com/SalesforceAIResearch/PLATE.

14.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

A Penalty Approach for Differentiation Through Black-Box Quadratic Programming Solvers

arXiv:2602.14154v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Differentiating through the solution of a quadratic program (QP) is a central problem in differentiable optimization. Most existing approaches differentiate through the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) system, but their computational cost and numerical robustness can degrade at scale. To address these limitations, we propose dXPP, a penalty-based differentiation framework that decouples QP solving from differentiation. In the solving step (forward pass), dXPP is solver-agnostic and can leverage any black-box QP solver. In the differentiation step (backward pass), we map the solution to a smooth approximate penalty problem and implicitly differentiate through it, requiring only the solution of a much smaller linear system in the primal variables. This approach bypasses the difficulties inherent in explicit KKT differentiation and significantly improves computational efficiency and robustness. We evaluate dXPP on various tasks, including randomly generated QPs, large-scale sparse projection problems, and a real-world multi-period portfolio optimization task. Empirical results demonstrate that dXPP is competitive with KKT-based differentiation methods and achieves substantial speedups on large-scale problems. Our implementation is open source and available at https://github.com/mmmmmmlinghu/dXPP.

15.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-16

Towards Data-Efficient Cross-Device Generalization of Grad-Shafranov Equilibria via Transfer Learning Neural Operator

arXiv:2606.15512v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Real-time reconstruction of magnetohydrodynamic equilibria is essential for plasma shaping, stability assessment and feedback control in magnetic confinement fusion. However, Grad-Shafranov equilibrium calculations remain largely device-specific and iterative, limiting their use in latency-constrained control settings. Existing neural approaches can accelerate individual equilibrium predictions, but they do not generally provide reusable models across changing plasma boundaries or tokamak geometries. Here we show that equilibrium reconstruction can be recast as a cross-device operator learning problem. We develop a domain-specific neural operator framework that maps geometry and profile parameters directly to the poloidal flux field, replacing repeated solve-on-demand computation with amortized operator inference. Using the analytically tractable Solov'ev family as a controlled Grad-Shafranov testbed, we generate equilibria across eight geometrically distinct tokamak-like configurations and benchmark five neural operator architectures under four transfer-learning strategies. Single-geometry pretraining gives poor transfer to unseen devices, whereas multi-geometry pretraining enables data-efficient adaptation. The Wavelet Neural Operator gives the strongest cross-geometry performance, reaching mean relative L2 errors below 4% with 100 labelled target equilibria and below 2% with full fine-tuning. The predicted magnetic fields satisfy the divergence-free constraint to numerical precision, and four architectures achieve millisecond or sub-millisecond inference. These results identify neural operator pretraining as a route towards reusable, real-time equilibrium inference across fusion device configurations.

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

Evaluating Second-Order Bias of LLMs Through Epistemic Entitlement

Evaluations of social bias in LLMs largely focus on whether models generate or imply biased content. However, as LLMs are increasingly used as judges of bias, they may exhibit social biases in subtler ways in how they evaluate biased content, which current methods do not systematically capture. We call this second-order bias: social bias in an LLM's judgment about social bias, which we evaluate through a novel, philosophically grounded reasoning task. Drawing on entitlement epistemology, we conceptualize bias as misplaced foundational knowledge that shapes an agent's rational inquiry, and derive a logical reasoning task for LLMs to judge to whom a biased text is acceptable or non-acceptable. We develop two simple metrics to measure how biased LLM judges are in inferring demographics for acceptability without sufficient support, and how these inferences vary across groups targeted by biased texts. Evaluating open and closed models, we find that our task evades safety guardrails by surfacing bias in model judgment. It varies systematically across target groups, reflects implicit social maps, and shows how models are still triggered by demographic labels. Our work points to the need for LLM bias evaluation in judgment tasks and broadly, for more theoretically grounded approaches to bias evaluation in NLP. We release our code and model responses at https://github.com/uofthcdslab/second-order-bias.

17.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

High-performance gates on trapped ion qubits using counterpropagating pulse-shaped laser beams

arXiv:2606.15672v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Highly-localized light-matter interactions are necessary for scaling trapped-ion architectures. In hyperfine qubits, counterpropagating beams generate entangling gates by coupling with motion, but this effect is undesirable during single-qubit operations. For that reason, single-qubit gates are traditionally implemented with copropagating beams, and the coexistence of two beam geometries adds hardware and computational overhead. In an effort towards collective performance improvement with minimal overhead, we design and implement pulse-amplitude and dephasing robust dynamically corrected gates using Space Curve Quantum Control (SCQC) and compare them against the constant-amplitude gate implementation. We perform gate set tomography on a four-qubit trapped-ion register, and we discover more than 50% error reduction when robust pulses are used. We find that counterpropagating robust gates often outperform their copropagating counterparts and reach error rates as low as $(3.59 \pm 1.25)\cdot 10^{-3}$, using diamond distance as a metric. This value establishes a laser-driven-gate error reference and is merely an order of magnitude higher than the best reported $microwave$ gate on a $single$ ion. Additional experiments reveal that robust pulses can effectively suppress non-Markovian errors that grow during runtime. Our work challenges the widely accepted belief that copropagating gates should be preferred for their weak motional coupling and invites the adoption of high-performance robust pulses that suppress multiple noise sources of the trapped-ion error budget.

18.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-16

Exploiting Search in Symbolic Numeric Planning with Patterns

arXiv:2606.16329v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this paper, we present a procedure for numeric planning based on Symbolic Pattern Planning (SPP). Given a numeric planning problem $\Pi$, a pattern $\prec$ is a sequence of actions used to define a formula encoding the subsequences of $\prec$ executable from a starting state $S$. Cardellini, Giunchiglia, and Maratea (2024a) follow the Planning as Satisfiability approach by defining, at each step $n \ge 0$, a formula $\Pi^\prec_n$ in which $(i)$ the pattern $\prec$ is computed only for $n=0$ in the initial state $I$ of $\Pi$, and then exploited at each step $n$, $(ii)$ the starting state $S$ is set to $I$, and $(iii)$ the set $G$ of goals is required to hold in the last state that can be reached by one of the subsequences of $\prec$ concatenated $n$ times. The procedure begins with $n=0$, terminates as soon as $\Pi^\prec_n$ is satisfiable, and otherwise proceeds by incrementing $n$. In this paper, possibly at each step, $(i)$ we symbolically search for an intermediate state $P$ reachable from $I$, closer to a goal state, $(ii)$ dynamically recompute the pattern $\prec_h$ – to be used in the next step – in $P$, $(iii)$ refine the pattern $\prec_g$ used to reach $P$, and $(iv)$ start the new search from the state $S$ which can be either the initial state $I$ or the last computed intermediate state $P$, exploiting the computed patterns $\prec_g$ and $\prec_h$ to define the pattern $\prec$ to be used in the search. In particular, at each step, we define a formula $\Pi^{\prec}_{S,P}$ encoding the existence of a state $P'$ closer than $P$ to a goal state, with $P'$ reachable from the starting state $S$ when using the pattern $\prec$. We present different techniques for producing such formulas, each corresponding to a different strategy for exploring the search space. We prove their correctness and completeness, the latter under certain conditions.

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

Vibrato Expression Control for Singing Voice Conversion with Improving Independent Control

arXiv:2606.17126v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Singing style is a crucial aspect of a natural and expressive singing voice. Singers utilize singing styles to convey the feeling or emotion of the songs. Several works have been proposed to control singing style for making the more expressive singing voice. Recently, VibE-SVC successfully controls vibrato by predicting high-frequency F0 contour. In this paper, we introduce a singing voice conversion framework, called VibE-SVC2, to improve singing style conversion performance and controllability. The model offers control over two types of singing styles: a pitch style and a timbre style. For the pitch style, to resolve the pitch-energy entanglement issue that is unresolved in our previous work, we introduce a novel Energy Style Converter to address remaining style information in the energy contour. In addition, we propose a Zero-shot Pitch Style Converter, which mimics the pitch style of reference audio. To expand the controllability of the model, we propose vibrato rate scaling that is an independent control of vibrato extent, which is unavailable in VibE-SVC. For the timbre style, we extend the model to handle a variety of phonation styles. However, addressing specific styles such as vocal fry poses a challenge, as conventional F0 extraction often fails due to their inherent subharmonic characteristics, which degrades the conversion quality. To address this, we propose a novel Subharmonic Correction algorithm to refine the F0 contour for more natural timbre conversion. Through comprehensive objective and subjective evaluations, we demonstrate that VibE-SVC2 provides fine-grained, independent control over two types of singing styles, outperforming existing methods.

20.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-20

A network approach to DNA methylation clocks

Biological age predicts health and lifespan better than chronological age, but remains difficult to measure. One leading molecular proxy for biological age is DNA methylation, which underlies age predictors known as "clocks". These clocks use penalized linear regression to predict chronological age from methylation levels using selected cytosine–guanine pairs (CpGs) along DNA. Although they predict chronological age within a few years and track mortality risk, there are several issues. Different clocks share a vanishingly small number of CpG sites, many of which show weak associations with age. Also, the clocks often do not transfer across methylation array platforms. This paper takes a network approach to better understand these issues. By using 12 public datasets from human blood, we build a co-methylation network of the sites that show the strongest age correlation. After pruning weak links, we find that it has a small number of large modules of covarying CpGs surrounded by many small modules and singleton sites. These modules are biologically interpretable, as they are associated with CpG island contexts and enriched for distinct Gene Ontology functions. We also map five established clocks onto this network (Horvath, Hannum, AltumAge, Skin & Blood, and Han) and find that they select some CpGs from the same module. This suggests that they are more similar than they appear. The network structure also suggests new ways to build clocks. A simple clock that retains one CpG per module matches the performance of established clocks. A second one, built from module-level principal components, outperforms all five established clocks in three validation cohorts and is transferable across array platforms (Illumina Infinium Methylation 450K or EPIC arrays). Overall, the network perspective shifts attention from individual CpG sites to modules of covarying sites. This perspective helps explain why DNA methylation clocks perform so well despite their differences and provides a more systematic approach for developing the next generation of aging biomarkers.

21.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

A Controlled Human Malaria Infection model for relapsing Plasmodium vivax

Background Plasmodium vivax malaria relapses are a major source of morbidity and onward transmission of infection. The underlying mechanisms are poorly understood and current therapies sub-optimal. We examined the safety and feasibility of a controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) model for relapsing P. vivax. Methods We conducted an open-label, proof-of-concept, CHMI study of relapsing P. vivax. Healthy, malaria-naive, Duffy-positive adults aged 18-45 years with extensive CYP2D6 metaboliser phenotype and normal blood glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) levels were recruited in Oxford, UK. Mosquito-bite CHMI was performed in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, using Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes infected with PvW1, a clonal isolate of P. vivax from Thailand. All follow-up visits were conducted in Oxford, UK. Primary P. vivax infections (qPCR > 500 genome copies/mL) were treated with artemether-lumefantrine (80mg/480mg at 8, 24, 36, 48 and 60 hours). From Day 28 following CHMI, participants attended a fortnightly clinic for clinical review and qPCR blood sampling, with additional assessments performed for any reported symptoms. P. vivax relapse infections (qPCR > 500 genome copies/mL) were treated with artemether-lumefantrine as per primary infection. Definitive anti-malarial treatment with atovaquone-proguanil (1000mg/400mg once daily for three days) and primaquine (0{middle dot}5 mg/kg/day for 14 days) was administered six months following CHMI, regardless of parasitaemia or symptoms. The primary objective was to assess the safety, feasibility and frequency of relapsing P. vivax after CHMI. Remote follow-up (5 years) is ongoing. The study is registered with ISRCTN registry (ISRCTN48625883). Findings 20 participants were screened for eligibility from 21 January 2025. Five participants (median age 22 years) underwent CHMI (five infected mosquitoes per participant) on 15 April 2025. All participants developed primary P. vivax infection and experienced at least one relapse infection. Two participants experienced a second relapse. Overall incidence rate was 3{middle dot}6 relapse infections per person-year. Solicited adverse events were mild or moderate and there were no serious adverse events. Definitive anti-malarial treatment was administered to all participants. One participant experienced primaquine-induced methaemoglobinaemia, resolving with early discontinuation of treatment (total dose 5{middle dot}3 mg/kg). To date, more than six months after primaquine treatment, no further relapses have been recorded. Interpretation CHMI of relapsing P. vivax is safe and feasible, allowing exploration of the mechanisms underlying relapse infections and providing a platform for future anti-relapse efficacy studies. Funding European Union Horizon Europe programme and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) via OptiVivax consortium; UK National Institute for Health and Care Research Biomedical Research Centre: Oxford; and UK Medical Research Council.

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

HAMON: Passive Optical Sequence Mixing for Long-Horizon Forecasting

arXiv:2606.17028v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Simple linear and frequency-domain models remain surprisingly competitive in long-horizon time-series forecasting, and recent mechanistic evidence suggests that standard forecasting benchmarks may not require the dense superposed representations that make transformers powerful in other domains. This raises a substrate-level question: if the core forecasting operator is often low-complexity and approximately linear, does it need to be implemented as learned digital temporal mixing? We introduce HAMON, a passive diffractive optical forecasting core in which historical values are encoded onto an optical aperture, future positions are left dark, and cascaded trainable phase masks with free-space diffraction shape the forecast directly in the output field. At inference, prediction is performed by a single passive optical propagation pass with no trainable digital sequence-mixing layer. Across standard benchmarks, HAMON outperforms the strongest digital baselines considered on ETTm2 at all horizons and on ETTh2 at all but the longest horizon, improving MSE by up to 14\% and doing so consistently across horizons rather than at isolated points. It is competitive on Weather and trails the strongest baselines on the remaining ETT settings and on the high-channel-count Traffic and Electricity datasets. Phase encoding, intensity-compatible readout, and phase-scrambling ablations, together with a TorchOptics cross-simulator check, indicate that the forecasts arise from the data-bearing optical field rather than from a digital forecasting head. Because the passive core uses standard Fourier optics, HAMON defines a concrete target for optical hardware and for passive physical sequence mixing.

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

From Reasoning Traces to Reusable Modules: Understanding Compositional Generalization in Language Model Reasoning

arXiv:2606.18089v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Post-training pipelines that combine supervised fine-tuning (SFT) with reinforcement learning (RL) have emerged as the key recipe for transforming large language models (LLMs) into robust reasoners. We argue that this combined success is driven by compositional generalization, which we formalize through a hierarchical latent selection model. In this framework, reasoning traces are generated by a cascade of discrete latent selection variables corresponding to reusable atomic modules, including both skills (local operations) and routing mechanisms (how intermediate information is selected, reused, and composed). Within this model, we theoretically show that SFT and RL play asymmetric, complementary roles: SFT supplies the raw module materials in compositional traces, and RL decomposes those traces to identify the latent atomic modules and enable compositional generalization. We design controlled experiments to validate this theory. Our results demonstrate that RL can extract atomic modules from compound traces supplied by SFT and recombine them to solve new configurations. Moreover, we find that training on compound traces yields stronger generalization than training on isolated atomic modules. Finally, we investigate the relationship between SFT and RL data and identify an effective protocol in which SFT ensures coverage of all atomic modules through compositional traces, while RL focuses on novel compositions outside the SFT support to drive exploration.

24.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-11

Parent and physiotherapist perceptions about movement skills of young children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis

Objective: The onset of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) in the early years ([&le;]5 years) may negatively impact movement skill (encompassing related concepts of gross motor skills, fundamental movement skills, and functional ability) development. Few studies have explored the perceptions and needs of parents and physiotherapists towards children's difficulty with these movement skills, essential to identify potential areas for added support. The objective of this study is to understand the perceptions of physiotherapists and parents towards movement skills of children with JIA. Methods: Seventeen parents and 24 physiotherapists completed an online questionnaire consisting of multiple choice and open-ended questions about the movement skills of young children with JIA. Demographic and multiple choice questions were quantitively analysed using descriptive statistics. Open-ended responses were analyzed using qualitative conventional content analysis. Results: About half (47%) of parents perceived their children to have movement difficulties, and 75% of physiotherapists described the movement skills of children with JIA as worse than other children of the same age. Our qualitative analysis revealed three general themes including: functional task difficulties; clinical variability in movement skills; and psychosocial components of movement skill difficulties. Conclusion: This study provides an analysis of perceptions of physiotherapists and parents towards the movement skills of young children with JIA. A significant proportion of parents and physiotherapists identify movement difficulties among children with JIA that impact daily life. Future interventions co-designed with both parents and care providers targeting movement skills are needed.

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arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

How Reliable are Fairness Audits with Unreliable Data?

arXiv:2506.23033v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Fairness audits are a key component of responsible machine-learning deployment. Yet, audit-recommendation reliability under incomplete protected-label access is still poorly understood. In this work, we focused on protected-label missingness in fairness mitigation audits. We introduced a seed-calibrated stress test to separate missingness effects from seed-to-seed movement already present under complete labels. Across ACS/Folktables tasks, missingness settings that retain some protected labels usually do not move selected mitigation methods beyond a complete-label seed-to-seed baseline. At $0%$ protected-label access, candidates collapse to an empirical-risk-minimization baseline and deterministic tie-breaking rather than revealing a broad missingness effect. We also found that threshold optimization can turn fairness gains on a single protected axis into intersectional harm above a seed baseline, and this threshold-optimizer finding persists under random-forest validation. Overall, our results highlight that protected-label missingness should be reported with seed-null calibration, candidate-set context, and intersectional consequences before it is treated as evidence of audit fragility.