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01.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-17

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

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

02.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

R2BC: Multi-Agent Imitation Learning from Single-Agent Demonstrations

arXiv:2510.18085v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Imitation Learning (IL) is a natural way for humans to teach robots, particularly when high-quality demonstrations are easy to obtain. While IL has been widely applied to single-robot settings, relatively few studies have addressed the extension of these methods to multi-agent systems, especially in settings where a single human must provide demonstrations to a team of collaborating robots. In this paper, we introduce and study Round-Robin Behavior Cloning (R2BC), a method that enables a single human operator to effectively train multi-robot systems through sequential, single-agent demonstrations. Our approach allows the human to teleoperate one agent at a time and incrementally teach multi-agent behavior to the entire system, without requiring demonstrations in the joint multi-agent action space. We show that R2BC methods match, and in some cases surpass, the performance of an oracle behavior cloning approach trained on privileged synchronized demonstrations across four multi-agent simulated tasks. Finally, we deploy R2BC on two physical robot tasks trained using real human demonstrations.

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

Stitching and dimensionality effects on large artificially generated volume datasets

Generating large images via deep learning requires patching input data to accommodate hardware memory limitations, then assembling output patches, a process that can introduce stitching artifacts when neighboring patches do not align at borders. While these artifacts are known to affect segmentation tasks, their impact on generative models for style-transfer remains poorly understood. We investigated three stitching approaches and two patch dimensionalities (2D vs 3D) using cycleGAN models trained on cryo-electron microscopy datasets. We evaluated both perceptual quality and performance on downstream mitochondria segmentation. Our key findings reveal that: (1) FID scores fail to detect subtle stitching artifacts that significantly impact downstream segmentation performance, (2) 3D models with artifact-free stitching marginally outperform 2D models on downstream tasks, though the improvement barely justifies the computational cost, and (3) 2D models train more stably due to larger batch sizes. Additionally, we demonstrate that ensembling predictions from three orthogonal directions can improve low-quality volumes but provides no benefit for high-quality outputs. These results demonstrate that maximizing generative model performance on large scientific datasets requires careful consideration and mitigation of stitching artifacts, and that perceptual metrics alone are insufficient for evaluating domain adaptation quality in biomedical imaging.

04.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-12

CAPED: Context-Aware Privacy Exposure Defense for Mobile GUI Agents

arXiv:2606.12666v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Screenshot-based mobile GUI agents can operate ordinary smartphone apps through the same visual interface as a human user, but this capability also turns every screen observation into a privacy boundary. During normal task execution, screenshots may expose contacts, messages, photos, files, recommendations, health cues, and other sensitive context that is unrelated to the user's request. We call this problem incidental visual privacy exposure. It is difficult to address with existing defenses: text anonymization misses many visual and inferential cues, while generic privacy masking can remove the evidence and controls that a GUI agent needs to complete the task. This paper presents CAPED, a context-aware pre-upload exposure control layer for mobile GUI agents. CAPED is designed as a phone-side protection layer: before screenshots are released to a remote multimodal agent, it extracts task requirements, uses screen context as a privacy prior, parses visible UI elements, and selectively exposes only content needed for the current task while masking incidental private content. We evaluate CAPED on AndroidWorld for broad task utility and with a controlled 28-task seeded privacy evaluation used as a measurement instrument for trajectory-level incidental leakage. In this seeded evaluation, Full CAPED reduces success-conditioned weighted seeded leakage from 0.766 under raw screenshots to 0.268 while preserving high task utility. A broader AndroidWorld run shows a remaining prototype-level utility cost, but the results support the central claim that screenshot upload should be treated as an explicit device–cloud boundary decision, governed by task-driven selective exposure rather than all-or-nothing screen sharing.

05.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-16

Asymptotic behavior of some strongly critical decomposable 3-type Galton–Watson processes with immigration

arXiv:2406.09852v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study the asymptotic behavior of a critical decomposable 3-type Galton-Watson process with immigration when its offspring mean matrix is triangular with diagonal entries 1. It is proved that, under second or fourth order moment assumptions on the offspring and immigration distributions, a sequence of appropriately scaled random step processes formed from such a Galton-Watson process converges weakly. The limit process can be described using independent squared Bessel processes $({\mathcal X}_{t,1})_{t\geq0}$, $({\mathcal X}_{t,2})_{t\geq0}$, and $({\mathcal X}_{t,3})_{t\geq0}$, the linear combinations of the integral processes of $({\mathcal X}_{t,1})_{t\geq0}$ and $({\mathcal X}_{t,2})_{t\geq0}$, and possibly the 2-fold iterated integral process of $({\mathcal X}_{t,1})_{t\geq0}$. The presence of the 2-fold iterated integral process in the limit distribution is a new phenomenon in the description of asymptotic behavior of critical multi-type Galton-Watson processes with immigration. Our results complete and extend some results of Foster and Ney (1978) for some strongly critical decomposable 3-type Galton-Watson processes with immigration.

06.
bioRxiv (Bioinfo) 2026-06-11

GermRL: Alleviating The Germline Bias In Autoregressive Antibody Language Models Through Reinforcement Learning

Antibodies are powerful therapeutics whose antigen specificity arises from sequence diversity shaped during development. Recently, language models trained on large antibody repertoire datasets have enabled the generation and screening of novel candidates, but these models retain a strong germline bias. As AI adoption increases in therapeutic workflows, it is crucial to develop models that harness the diversity of antibodies necessary for the discovery of mutations that encode desirable properties. Previous work explored the germline bias in masked antibody language models, yet the bias in generative autoregressive language models has not yet been addressed. Here, we present GermRL, a lightweight and modular reinforcement learning (RL) framework capable of alleviating the germline bias in pre-trained antibody autoregressive language models through group relative policy optimization (GRPO). GermRL achieves consistent one-shot generation of antibodies that satisfy specified mutation thresholds from germline while maintaining structural plausibility. Under the lowest and highest mutation thresholds tested (5 and 35 mutations from germline), GermRL scores 0.992 and 0.950 pass@1, respectively, compared to 0.398 and 0.034 for the pre-trained language model. Within GermRL, we introduce a key pair of modifications to GRPO that increase training efficiency by discouraging reward hacking under our antibody application. Furthermore, comparison of RL generated and natural antibody sequences reveals how RL based optimization can explore alternative evolutionary mutational patterns and residue compositional strategies while preserving key global properties of natural antibodies, including identifiable germline assignments, embedding-level similarity and comparable developability profiles. Thus, RL-trained generative models optimized to promote antibody mutations through diversity from germline provide a promising framework for navigating the antibody sequence landscape, enabling exploration of novel yet biologically plausible candidates for therapeutic design.

07.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

Acquisition state behaves as a structured, measurable variable governing lung-nodule AI: kernel-driven measurement instability and noise-driven detection fragility, invisible to DICOM metadata

AI governance for medical imaging is formalizing: the 2026 ACR-SIIM Practice Parameter recommends local acceptance testing and ongoing drift monitoring, and the ACR Assess-AI registry monitors AI outputs using DICOM metadata for context. We argue that a necessary, currently unmonitored layer sits beneath output metrics: whether incoming studies remain within the acquisition envelope a model was validated on. Using a LUNA16-trained MONAI RetinaNet lung-nodule detector, we test whether acquisition state behaves as a structured, measurable variable. On real paired CT differing only in reconstruction kernel (NLST B30f vs B80f), kernel alone shifted AI-measured diameter and flipped a Fleischner size category in 5.2% (8 of 155) of nodules at fixed patient and acquisition, while detection confidence was unchanged (Wilcoxon p=0.22). Under controlled LIDC-IDRI perturbations the effects dissociated by axis: the noise axis degraded detection confidence (p=5.9e-32, concentrated in nodules under 6 mm) but not measurement, while the frequency/kernel axis corrupted measurement (p=8.6e-13) but not detection. A 4-feature pixel fingerprint recovered reconstruction identity (patient-level AUC about 0.95 on real CT, 0.995 on a QIBA phantom) where the ConvolutionKernel DICOM tag was uninformative (identical labels across reconstructions). The kernel axis transported across four manufacturers (leave-one-vendor-out AUC 0.94-0.98, matching the within-vendor ceiling). Acquisition state thus maps to distinct AI failure modes, frequency content to measurement reliability and noise to detection sensitivity, and is not recoverable from metadata. Acquisition-aware, input-side validation is the missing layer for the acceptance-testing and drift-monitoring requirements now entering imaging-AI accreditation.

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

Can We Stop Malicious AI? KILLBENCH: A Benchmark for External AI Kill Switch Feasibility

arXiv:2511.13725v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Malicious AI causing harm to humans is not just a Hollywood fantasy. Indeed, as highly capable models such as Claude Mythos emerge and agent systems like OpenClaw rapidly spread, the question of how to stop an AI that acts maliciously – whether by design or by accident – has become urgent. To address this, we propose Killbench, a benchmark for evaluating the Killswitch: a mechanism that halts a malicious AI's in-progress behavior using only external signals. Targeting web agents – the most widely deployed agent domain – Killbench evaluates a range of Kill Switch methods that halt a maliciously operating agent without any access to its internal parameters or the surrounding malicious AI's system, relying solely on external inputs. The benchmark comprises four malicious AI's agent configurations (including an uncensored LLM Agent), 8 harmful scenarios, and malicious prompts constructed from 10 distinct jailbreak patterns. We further construct four External AI Kill Switch defense methods and evaluate them on Grok-4.3, GPT-5.2, Gemma4, Qwen3.6 and Qwen3.5-uncensored, contributing an empirical instrument toward the feasibility of External AI Kill Switches against malicious AI and to the study of AI corrigibility.

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

Explicit Quantum Circuit Simulation of Nonlinear 1-Dimensional Fluid with Carleman-linearized Boltzmann Method

arXiv:2606.12770v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Quantum computation of fluid dynamics has attracted growing attention as a key application of fault-tolerant quantum computers anticipated in the coming decade, with lattice Boltzmann methods emerging as a particularly promising approach. Explicit and efficient elementary-gate-level circuit simulations, however, have so far been demonstrated only in the linear case. Here we include the leading nonlinearity through second-order Carleman linearization of the one-dimensional Boltzmann equation, and demonstrate, via explicit quantum-circuit simulation, the preparation of the final-time state using a Taylor-expansion-based ODE solver based on the quantum singular value transformation. With this construction, we analyze the gate and qubit complexities, which scale logarithmically with the grid size, the nonlinearity captured by the higher-order Carleman linearization, and the practical utility of higher-order expansions in the Taylor ODE solver. The construction provides a concrete baseline for computational cost reduction and further developments such as extensions to higher dimensions, complex geometries, and the extraction of physical quantities, towards industrially useful quantum CFD.

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

Revisiting the Systematicity in Negation in the Era of In-Context Learning

Understanding the meaning of negated sentences remains one of the challenges for language models, even in the era of large language models (LLMs). We analyze systematicity regarding LLM understanding of negation from two perspectives: behavioral systematicity and representational systematicity. For behavioral systematicity, we confirm that through demonstrations and in-context learning, LLMs can recognize negation expressions and scope within sentences to some extent, but they fail to achieve perfect performance. In particular, the difficulty of the negation scope recognition for models varies depending on the output format. For representational systematicity, we analyze the extent to which function vectors can be robustly constructed from in-context examples for tasks that are essential to understanding negation. The experiments suggest that while function vectors can be composed for negation cue extraction tasks, extracting function vectors for recognizing scope is more challenging.

11.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-17

ThinkJEPA: Empowering Latent World Models with Large Vision-Language Reasoning Model

Recent progress in latent world models (e.g., V-JEPA2) has shown promising capability in forecasting future world states from video observations. Nevertheless, dense prediction from a short observation window limits temporal context and can bias predictors toward local, low-level extrapolation, making it difficult to capture long-horizon semantics and reducing downstream utility. Vision–language models (VLMs), in contrast, provide strong semantic grounding and general knowledge by reasoning over uniformly sampled frames, but they are not ideal as standalone dense predictors due to compute-driven sparse sampling, a language-output bottleneck that compresses fine-grained interaction states into text-oriented representations, and a data-regime mismatch when adapting to small action-conditioned datasets. We propose a VLM-guided JEPA-style latent world modeling framework that combines dense-frame dynamics modeling with long-horizon semantic guidance via a dual-temporal pathway: a dense JEPA branch for fine-grained motion and interaction cues, and a uniformly sampled VLM thinker branch with a larger temporal stride for knowledge-rich guidance. To transfer the VLM's progressive reasoning signals effectively, we introduce a hierarchical pyramid representation extraction module that aggregates multi-layer VLM representations into guidance features compatible with latent prediction. Experiments on hand-manipulation trajectory prediction show that our method outperforms both a strong VLM-only baseline and a JEPA-predictor baseline, and yields more robust long-horizon rollout behavior.

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

Clustering Node Attributed Networks with Graph Neural Networks and Self Learning

arXiv:2606.13444v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Graph clustering - partitioning the node set of a graph into disjoint subsets that reflect some latent information - is a fundamental problem as it finds applications in a myriad of different scenarios. While this classic problem has been tackled for decades by different communities, a recent variation of the problem driven by real data considers the scenario where nodes have attributes that are also informative. This has triggered novel methods that simultaneously leverage network information (edges) and node information (attributed) in the design of novel clustering algorithms. This work proposes a novel framework that builds on prior works that have applied graph neural networks (GNN) to graph clustering. The proposed framework operates in rounds of self learning in a fully unsupervised setting. In each round, a GNN generates representations for nodes that are used to cluster the nodes. This clustering influences the graph used to generate the node representation in the next round. Moreover, a context graph built in each round using the original graph is used to generate the node representations. Empirical results show that the proposed methodology extracts information from both network edges and node attributes in synthetic data, outperforming algorithms focused solely on the network or attributes when neither are very informative. Multiple rounds of learning also improve the performance and always outperforms a long single round of training (i.e., classic GNN graph clustering). When considering real datasets, empirical results indicate that the proposed methodology is competitive to state-of-the-art methods when cluster sizes are balanced.

13.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

A blinded, counterbalanced rater design for evaluating AI-assisted summarisation of tertiary clinical genomics reports: methodology of the QNOMX-VHIR-CPSP-001 Phase 1 study

Background. Tertiary clinical genomics reports condense layered molecular findings into documents that treating oncologists must read, translate, and act upon; manual summarisation of these reports is time-consuming and variable. Tools that assist summarisation and translation into local languages are emerging, yet the field lacks an agreed methodology for evaluating such tools before any downstream clinical use. The appropriate first endpoint is fidelity of the generated summary to its source report, assessed by qualified human raters under blinded scoring, not downstream variant classification. Methods. QNOMX-VHIR-CPSP-001 Phase 1 is a single-site, non-interventional clinical performance study conducted at Vall d'Hebron Institut de Recerca (VHIR) under ISO 20916:2019 as a Clinical Performance Study Protocol. De-identified tertiary cancer genomics reports from pediatric oncology cases are summarised by the AI-assisted summarisation system under evaluation and, in parallel, by the standard manual workflow. Qualified raters score both summary types against the source genomics report using the Quality Summary Index (QSI), a six-dimension, five-point rubric adapted from the Provider Documentation Summarization Quality Instrument, under a blinded, counterbalanced, two-period crossover with a minimum fourteen-day washout. Two co-primary composite endpoints, content and presentation, are analysed for non-inferiority under a Bayesian hierarchical model, with a frequentist linear mixed model as the convergence check. Inter-rater reliability is reported as Krippendorff's ; a Monte-Carlo power analysis of the fixed clustered design is pre-specified. Discussion. The design isolates summarisation quality from clinical decision-making by scoring both summary types against the same source report under blinding, counterbalancing, and a fourteen-day washout. Conclusion. The QSI rubric, the counterbalanced crossover, and the pre-specified Bayesian primary with frequentist convergence check define a replicable protocol for early-stage evaluation of AI-assisted summarisation in tertiary genomics reporting; observed variance components will inform sample-size determination for Phase 2.

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

TechRAG: Evidence-Gated Multimodal Agentic RAG for Technical Literature Reasoning

arXiv:2606.01613v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper presents an agentic multimodal retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) framework for domain-specific literature reasoning, instantiated on a curated corpus of several thousand papers in intelligent tires, vehicle dynamics, vehicle control, sensing, estimation, and machine learning. Unlike conventional single-pass RAG systems, the proposed architecture uses an autonomous, evidence-gated pipeline that classifies query intent, generates separate text and visual query rewrites, performs hybrid text retrieval with FAISS and BM25 followed by cross-encoder reranking, expands evidence through graph-guided chunk traversal over a Neo4j knowledge graph, and retrieves visual document evidence using ColSmol late-interaction embeddings with MUVERA fixed-dimensional encoding, approximate nearest-neighbor search, and MaxSim reranking. The framework scores evidence sufficiency using a 100-point rubric with hybrid rule-based/LLM review, retries retrieval through drift-guarded reformulation, searches external academic databases through optimize–search–vet loops, merges and deduplicates multimodal evidence, verifies citation integrity, and generates cited answers through Planner, Researcher, Writer, and Critic agents with self-correcting revision. Key contributions include: (i) a scalable multimodal retrieval architecture combining text, graph, and visual evidence over 40,000 document pages; (ii) an interpretable evidence sufficiency and retry mechanism; (iii) a multi-agent generation pipeline with evidence mapping and critic-driven revision; (iv) a domain knowledge graph with LLM-based entity extraction, OpenAlex author validation, and intra-corpus citation resolution; and (v) a route-dependent external search architecture for targeted literature expansion. The result is a practical, evidence-gated, multimodal agentic RAG architecture for technical reasoning over specialized research corpora.

15.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-19

Shape of Thought: Progressive Object Assembly via Visual Chain-of-Thought

Multimodal models for text-to-image generation have achieved strong visual fidelity, yet they remain brittle under compositional structural constraints, notably generative numeracy, attribute binding, and part-level relations. To address these challenges, we propose Shape-of-Thought (SoT), a visual CoT framework for process-supervised progressive shape assembly in the rendered 2D domain, without external engines at inference time. SoT trains a unified multimodal autoregressive model to generate interleaved textual plans and rendered intermediate states, helping the model capture shape-assembly logic without producing explicit geometric representations. Unlike text-only CoT, each decision is grounded in a rendered state, making counts, attachments, topology, and intermediate part-addition errors inspectable across the trajectory. To support this paradigm, we introduce SoT-26K, a large-scale dataset of grounded assembly traces derived from part-based CAD hierarchies, and T2S-CompBench, a benchmark for evaluating structural integrity and trace faithfulness. Fine-tuning on SoT-26K achieves 88.4% on component numeracy and 84.8% on structural topology, outperforming direct generation by +24.2 points on component numeracy and +19.3 points on structural topology. SoT establishes a transparent testbed for rendered-domain structure-aware generation. The code is available at https://github.com/yuhuo03/Shape-of-Thought.

16.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

A More-Than-Human Approach to Designing for Mental Health: Remixing Prototypes for the Contexts of Complex Healthcare Infrastructures

Digital mental health tools (DMHTs) often fail to be successfully implemented in clinical settings. While user- and human-centred design frameworks are frequently proposed for developing effective tools, they are insufficient to address the sociotechnical complexity of healthcare environments. This paper addresses this limitation by detailing the application of a more-than-human design framework to incorporate wider contextual factors into design decisions. To demonstrate the application of this more-than-human design framework, we present a case study showcasing the design of one specific feature within a DMHT intended to support Health Improvement Practitioners (HIPs) in New Zealand's Integrated Primary Mental Health and Addictions (IPMHA) service. Our process blends usage-context storyboards with interface prototypes, using think-aloud interviews to test the contextual fit of our prototypes. The initial design concept failed due to contextual factors such as inconsistent wait times and the administrative burden on clients and clinic staff. This led to a pivot to a more context-appropriate, practitioner-focused, in-session concept for digital psychometric administration and automated scoring. This case study demonstrates that for DMHTs to be viable within complex healthcare environments, design must focus on more than the needs of a single user, incorporating multiple stakeholders and contextual variables across the wider service-delivery context.

17.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Maturing Markov Decision Processes: Decision Making under Increasing Information and Shrinking Action Sets

arXiv:2606.18820v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Sequential decision problems often exhibit an asymmetric evolution of information and decision flexibility: as a decision cycle unfolds, the agent receives richer information while feasible actions expire due to operational cutoffs, commitments, or resource constraints. Standard MDP formulations typically flatten this structure into stage-dependent state descriptions and action masks, thereby obscuring the nested information–action asymmetry that determines which decisions are urgent and which can be deferred. We introduce Maturing Markov Decision Processes (MMDPs), a formulation built around this information–action asymmetry. We characterize one of its key consequences through an expiring-action priority principle, which identifies the actions that must be resolved before the next stage. Motivated by this structure, we develop a structure-aware reinforcement learning framework with stage-aware policy design, expiring-action abstraction, and search-augmented learning with distillation. Experiments on a controlled multi-supplier replenishment problem, simplified cash-management environments of increasing complexity, and a production-scale simulator show that explicitly modeling this asymmetry improves learning efficiency and becomes increasingly valuable as decision problems scale.

18.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

A2D2: Fine-Tuning Any-Length Discrete Diffusion for Adaptive Decoding

arXiv:2606.13565v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Discrete diffusion models offer a simple and stable likelihood-based framework for sequence generation, recently extended to any-length settings via token insertion. Principled reward-guided fine-tuning for any-length discrete diffusion, however, remains largely unexplored. We introduce Fine-Tuning Any-Length Discrete Diffusion for Adaptive Decoding (A2D2), a unified framework for reward-guided fine-tuning of any-length discrete diffusion models via joint optimization of the insertion and unmasking policies together with a quality-based inference schedule. We derive the Radon-Nikodym derivative for the joint insertion-unmasking path measures, enabling theoretically guaranteed convergence to the intractable reward-tilted sequence distribution without requiring target samples. Building on this, we establish unmasking and insertion quality as tractable approaches for minimizing decoding error and introduce the Adaptive Joint Decoding (AJD) loss, which provably yields the optimal path measure that generates the reward-tilted distribution. Empirically, A2D2 improves reward optimization while enhancing generation flexibility and accuracy over prior fixed-length fine-tuning and inference-time guidance methods.

19.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

Agreement in Representation Space for Open-Ended Self-Consistency

Self-consistency improves LLM reasoning by sampling multiple outputs and selecting the most consistent answer, but existing formulations largely rely on exact matching and therefore remain limited to tasks with categorical outputs. In this work, we study self-consistency in open-ended generation tasks such as code synthesis and text summarization. We hypothesize that consistency can be understood as a geometric property of the generation space, where semantically compatible generations concentrate in similar regions of representation space. To study this hypothesis, we introduce Embedding-Based Agreement (EBA), a simple training-free operationalization that estimates agreement by clustering sampled generations in embedding space. Through experiments on mathematical reasoning, code generation, and summarization, we show that agreement in representation space provides a robust and scalable signal of self-consistency for open-ended tasks. In particular, EBA consistently outperforms random selection and exhibits more stable scaling behavior than recent selection approaches based on LLM evaluation or uncertainty estimation. We further show that these agreement signals remain stable across model families and embedding spaces, even with native hidden representations. Finally, our analysis shows that the geometric location occupied by sampled generations is strongly correlated with generation quality: generations concentrated near central regions of representation space tend to correspond to more reliable outputs, whereas peripheral generations are substantially less accurate. Overall, our findings support viewing self-consistency as a property of the geometric organization of sampled generations rather than exact symbolic overlap.

20.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

A Randomized, Controlled, Double Blind Clinical Study to Evaluate Use of Hydron Alkaline Ionised Water (HAIW) in Healthy Participants

Background and Objectives: Alkaline Ionized Water (AIW) is considered among the highest quality healthy drinking water worldwide and is widely discussed for its various health benefits. Hydron Alkaline Ionized Water (HAIW) is produced through electrolysis, resulting in a stable pH of approximately 9.5 with a negative Oxidation Reduction Potential (ORP), making it an antioxidant beverage. The objective of this study was to evaluate the safety of HAIW and its effects on digestion, sleep, energy, and overall quality of life in healthy participants compared to Packaged Drinking Water (PDW). Materials and Methods: A randomized, controlled, double blind, prospective clinical study was conducted in which a total of 24 healthy participants between the age group of 21 to 40 years were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to either HAIW Group or Packaged Drinking Water Group with equal gender distribution. Participants were hospitalized for 7 days and asked to consume at least 3 litres of the assigned water daily. Primary outcomes were safety-related laboratory parameters and adverse event monitoring. Secondary outcomes included assessment of digestion (appetite, digestion, bowel habits), urine parameters, sleep quality, freshness after waking, fatigue, energy/stamina/strength, quality of life, and global assessment Results: All 24 participants completed the study with no dropouts. Baseline demographics were comparable between the two groups. Assessment of primary safety-related laboratory parameters including Complete Blood count, liver function tests, renal function tests, blood sugar, Electrocardiogram and serum electrolytes showed non-significant change from baseline to 7 days and remained within normal limits in both groups, with non-significant difference between groups (p>0.05). HAIW showed significantly better improvement in appetite, digestion, and bowel habits from Day 2 onwards compared to Packaged drinking water. Sleep quality and freshness after waking up showed significant improvement from Day 3 and Day 2 respectively in the HAIW and PDW group, with significantly better improvement in HAIW group. Fatigue scores showed significant reduction at Day 6 and 7 in both groups with non-significant difference between groups. A total of 5 adverse events were reported (3 in HAIW, 2 in PDW), all unrelated to study products and were mild in nature. Global assessment showed excellent to good overall safety and tolerability in both groups. Conclusion: HAIW was well tolerated by all participants without any adverse effects. All laboratory safety parameters remained within normal range. HAIW demonstrated significant improvements in digestive function (appetite, digestion, bowel habits), sleep quality, and freshness after waking as compared to PDW. The study concludes that HAIW can be safely consumed. HAIW improves digestive and sleep-related functions.

21.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-15

Communication Policy Evolution for Proactive LLM Agents

arXiv:2606.14314v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLM agents have rapidly evolved into autonomous systems, yet a persistent information gap remains between users and agents: communication is costly, while users' identical preferences further limit information exchange. To investigate how agents should communicate across modalities, this paper formalizes Communication Policy, establishes textual and UI-based policies, and then evaluates communication policies across diverse environments, personas, and model combinations. Building information asymmetry for proactive agents, we set up two complementary settings, User-Agent and Planner-Executor. Experimental results reveal complementary strengths between interaction channels: text-based interaction often facilitates task performance, while structured UI improves agents' response quality and persona compliance. Motivated by that, a hybrid method combines these advantages. We further propose Communication Policy Evolution (CPE), a self-evolution framework for refining communication policies through rollout and prompt-level evolving. Without model modification, CPE achieves the best task success across multiple settings using prompt refinement alone. Our findings identify communication behavior as a critical yet underexplored design dimension for LLM agents.

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

MA-DLE: Speech-based Automatic Depression Level Estimation via Memory Augmentation

Speech-based automatic estimation of depression levels is essential for enabling early detection and timely intervention, particularly in resource-constrained mental health settings. In recent years, deep learning has demonstrated impressive success across various domains, including affective computing and mental health assessment. Most existing approaches rely on RNN-based architectures (such as LSTM and GRU) to model temporal information for depression estimation. However, the extracted features often emphasize only a few adjacent speech segments, limiting their ability to capture long-range dependencies. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a memory-based feature augmentation method that enhances the representational capacity of GRU-extracted features. Rather than indiscriminately incorporating historical data, our memory bank is designed to selectively integrate two types of components in order to reduce redundancy and irrelevance: (1) historical temporal features that closely resemble the current GRU output, offering complementary contextual information; and (2) dynamic memory features identified based on feature variability, which capture behavioral and emotional fluctuations indicative of depressive symptoms. To effectively fuse the memory-augmented features with GRU outputs, we further design a Hierarchical Attention Fusion (HAF) module. Our method is evaluated on the widely used DAIC-WOZ and E-DAIC datasets, achieving state-of-the-art performance.

23.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-24

From Open Waters to Enclosed Cabins: ProteusVPR for Cross-Scene Visual Place Recognition in Maritime Perception and Cabin Inspection

Autonomous robotic inspection in maritime environments presents unique challenges for Visual Place Recognition (VPR) due to cross-scene perceptual shifts. Robots navigating ship-borne environments must transition between visually distinct domains: open decks with sparse textures and severe illumination changes, and enclosed cabins with repetitive structures and high visual ambiguity. Existing VPR methods, designed primarily for urban or indoor scenes, fail to generalize reliably across these starkly different scenarios. To address this, we propose ProteusVPR, a two-stage retrieval-refinement framework. The first stage employs any standard VPR model for initial image retrieval. The second stage introduces a geometric-visual estimation network that fuses the retrieved image with two temporally preceding frames, incorporating geometric descriptors, a local affine coordinate system, and camera azimuth encoding to achieve precise localization. To support this task, we introduce the XHZ dataset, an 8K-panoramic ship-borne dataset collected from an operational vessel, featuring multi-floor cabin structures, deck transition zones, and strict query-database separation for rigorous evaluation. Extensive experiments on the XHZ dataset demonstrate that ProteusVPR consistently improves the localization accuracy across multiple VPR backbones, reducing mean localization error by over 60\% on average and that ProteusVPR offers an effective and robust solution for precise visual localization in challenging, cross-scene maritime environments.

24.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-19

Policy-aware Vector Search: A Vision for Fine Grained Access Control in Vector Databases

arXiv:2606.19803v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vector databases are increasingly used in security sensitive contexts with Retrieval Augmented Generation and organizational AI pipelines; however, their security capabilities remain limited. Specifically, Fine-grained Access Control (FGAC) which is required to ensure that data access adheres to user-specific policies is not fully supported in modern vector databases. Unlike relational databases, vector databases combine structured and unstructured attributes to provide semantic, approximate query results, which complicates FGAC implementation. This creates an inherent tension between enforcing FGAC policies correctly, achieving high ANN search recall and maintaining low query latency. In this paper, we present a vision for Policy-aware Vector Search by formalizing the FGAC policy model in vector databases as well as the enforcement problem. We compare various enforcement strategies, present preliminary findings, and identify key open challenges for future research in policy-aware vector search.

25.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

Accelerating Speculative Diffusions via Block Verification

arXiv:2606.13426v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Speculative decoding speeds up LLM inference by using a draft model to generate tokens, with an acceptance-rejection scheme that ensures that the output matches the target distribution. Adapting this to continuous diffusions is difficult because speculative sampling requires drawing from a residual distribution. While straightforward in discrete spaces, efficiently sampling this residual in continuous space is non-trivial. Consequently, existing diffusion adaptations either use computationally inefficient sampling techniques or rely on an alternative scheme. In this work, we introduce a novel scheme that efficiently implements the original speculative sampling mechanism for diffusion models. Our approach offers a critical advantage over current methods: it enables us to adapt block verification from LLMs to diffusions – which provably improves the acceptance rate of drafts. Furthermore, we formalize and analyze the Free Drafter, a heuristic self-speculative drafter for diffusions that requires no training. By enabling block verification, our Free Drafter yields up to a 6.3% speedup over existing speculative methods with no additional training and negligible overhead beyond the existing parallel verification pass.